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The CEO for the Ministry Of Transport is on a countrywide bus terminal tour in an attempt to improve the quality of these terminals for end users which includes workers, students and tourists. Jomarie Lanza met with him today at the busiest hub, the Novelo's bus terminal and he shared more details on the tour and what he hopes to get out of it:

There is a heavy flow of human traffic through these bus terminals on a daily basis, from GOB workers to school children, and there is often no guarantee or certainty as to whether or not the next bus will arrive or depart on time. And that's just one of the many flaws in the transport system that the CEO hopes he can correct in the near future.

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Transport
"Basically we are on a familiarisation tour, myself along with my senior managers from the ministry. What we are looking at is to see the infrastructure of the terminals. We have been in the southern part of the country, we have also been in the west and so we are in the eastern part of the country now. Looking at the infrastructure that the ministry has in this area. As you would know the terminal is very important for commuters a number of persons pass through the terminals everyday commuting to and from work and so basically we want to make sure that the terminal is in a state of cleanliness looking at the bathroom facilities we know that these bathrooms are used daily by women and some cases pregnant women we want to make sure that it is conducive for them to be able to use we also looking at the other ibfrasnture seating facilities and so forth for persons who are waiting for the bus to go about their business and I have also said to the chief transport officer under whose portfolio the terminals fall to ensure that we develop a system where we can have within the terminals screens and these screens are going to display the schedule of busses so that when a person comes to the terminal they can go to the screen and see what time the buses are going to leave and which bus will leave at what time and that way they can schedule more or less how they want to commute or which bus company they want to use to go home. And so its a matter of making sure we upgrade the system that we currently have. We cannot continue to work in such a way that things are done so haphazardly. People don't know what bus run and what time and these sorts of things we have to regularise things and that is one of the projects we are currently working on at this time."

All the terminals are in need of not just an upgrade but some sort of structure and organisation, and of course that can't happen at just the snap of a finger. CEO Williams says that it is a process, one that involves cooperation between stakeholders to find the funding for it.

Chester Williams
"Well certainly what we are looking at now is a short term plan as you would the minister is currently going around promoting the new system that we would want to implement hopefully at the beginning of next year, one national bus company. with that it should be bringing with it new terminals and we are hoping that is going to be a part of the package and if not new terminals then significant upgrades to the current terminal again as the minister has said that we are looking at a PPP project and if that does materialise then we can see significant upgrades to the terminals as well."