It is a little before 6:30 am and the stop at the Julio Antonio Mella stadium "shines" as if everyone had gathered, very early, and the fact of getting up early is not going to help anyone. The long faces are impatient, the boarding is in "small batches". The parade of empty buses unnerves the spirits of those who are waiting and the atmosphere begins to be tinged with opinions that are often rightfully so. One expression is repeated and adds annoyance: "Those are leased."
"It is disrespectful that the drivers give rides to the buses and do not pick up anyone, seeing how full the bus stops are. I ask myself, where do they come from, who controls them, and how come there is fuel for some things and not for others?"
At the opposite end of this city, Éver Luis confesses to 26 that he has been unable to get to the Ernesto Guevara hospital for more than an hour, a bucket and several bundles support his urgency. "My wife is hospitalized, I have been struggling for six days with urban transportation because my pocket is not enough to take cars. I have seen everything, I am always late and I leave like a sardine in a can. At midday I don't even go out, there's nothing at all," she says.
Yunia Díaz tells of her adventures: "My odyssey is to take the child to the Volodia children's circle every morning and to be on time for work. I live in Buena Vista, I can't make my baby walk the whole way, and my account doesn't allow for other transportation. What can I tell you, it is a constant stress and helplessness".
Outside the National Bus Terminal, the picture is similar.
"I recently came to say goodbye to my daughter, who was returning to Havana and had to pay 3,500 pesos to leave in a rented bus. They didn't charge her at the ticket office, but inside the bus, as if they were doing her a favor. They took advantage of his need," said Elsa Sosa.
Travelers wonder where the schedule of the departures of the buses that operate under this modality appears if they leave from the terminal or other areas, how they can be reserved, and, above all, what the fare to the different destinations is.
BUSINESS ONLY?
Pedro Yosvany Carbonell Fernández, better known as Chino, is the administrator of the small company Pedrocar y Socio. On May 8, 2022, he completed the project whose purpose, so far, is to move passengers to the nation's capital.
"Previously I was self-employed and provided services with my minibus until I decided to expand the business. Here I didn't have an easy time with leasing, so I went out to look for buses all over Cuba and I succeeded in the provinces of Camagüey and Havana (Vía Azul)."
"Today I have two buses running and six more being assembled because the buses that are leased are not only lacking batteries and tires, they are proposed to be retired and they have to be completely new."
"In Las Tunas there is no stipulated rate for any of these vehicles that make interprovincial trips, what usually happens is that the company makes a contract with the client and if he agrees, he can leave in any of the equipment arranged by my company, which leave daily at 5:00 pm to the Cuban capital for one thousand 500 pesos."
"We have contracts with several state entities and we operate in two ways. One is by ticket or transfer service, which consists of renting us only for them. We also have our own minibusses for more private trips and the door-to-door service, which involves picking people up at their homes for five thousand pesos and taking them to wherever they request in Havana."
"From local transportation, I have rented a 'Diana' to move around the city. It has not yet left the workshop. The price is a point to be valued because the tires and everything they need must be bought by ourselves, so the value of 1.00 peso per passenger does not cover the maintenance expenses."
When asked if they had ever received supervision from the relevant authorities, Chino explained that, since the approval of the small company, their work has never been reviewed.
OF DEFICIENCIES AND "DIS" CONTROL
Reynaldo Reyes Silva, in charge of the Direction of Transportation in the ¨Balcón de Oriente¨ (Eastern Cuban Balcony), confesses that the application here of Resolution 207 of 2021 of the Ministry of Transportation (Mitrans) focused on the economic benefits that would be generated by the leases, without protecting under a fair contract the state commissioning of the vehicles and their social work, especially in the current times of inflation.
So far, the territory has leased 26 vehicles for this activity, 18 from the Passenger and General Cargo Transportation Company (CARDINAL) among buses, semi-buses, trucks, and vans, most of them destined for entities of the Business System such as Fishing and Tobacco, and the rest to MSMEs; one from School Buses, five from the National Buses base business unit and two cars from the School of Road Education and Driving.
"The requirement for leasing underutilized equipment, both to individuals and legal entities, is that they had to have been paralyzed for a long time with no possibility of repair, and this was not what was done in all cases, because there were means that were discharged and were included," emphasizes Reyes Silva.
"There were many deficiencies at the time that we are going to correct, for example, the fact that you can rent a car anywhere on the island and also operate it in the area you choose. There is a vital element and that is you have to respond to a group of local, social interests of the community and of the environment where the equipment is located. There were also difficulties in the contractual aspect."
"The contracts should have analyzed where, how, and when to provide this passenger transportation service. When these elements were completely ignored, a bit of anarchy was generated. We have witnessed that in other provinces they charge up to four thousand pesos in fares to go to Havana. Therefore, it is essential to bring some order in this direction before the end of the year, otherwise, there will be an accelerated increase in fares. Fortunately, Mitrans has decided to immediately correct such deviations and will set prices for these buses nationally."
"We have buses here that pay monthly 103,000 pesos to Ómnibus Nacionales (National Busses). That is where the cost to the users is distorted. The essence of the recent indications lies in the fact that from now on there will only be a commercial margin of up to 15 percent after the operating expenses are deducted."
"We cannot be absolute and say that all of them are bad experiences, because there are those who are fulfilling their purpose and bring welfare to the community, but we want a renewal so that the good performance encompasses each one of those involved."
NEW CONTRACTS AND REFORMULATIONS
Because of the perceived irregularities, the Prime Minister of the Republic, Manuel Marrero Cruz, proposed the need to make adjustments to Law 207, a novel legislation born with many expectations on how much it could boost the technical availability of the vehicle fleet of all agencies and actors, and the income from its exploitation. However, for various reasons, I did not take the best course.
The MITRANS said that it will tour the country to make the final decisions since in many cases the amounts established are exorbitant and go beyond their real value. "We are making clear our position of in conformity before these realities -expresses to 26 Reyes Silva-, but the Ministry must get involved and make an order."
"There is today an incoherence in this issue and to eliminate it we are called all of us who have a responsibility in the Transport System, businessmen, regulatory control bodies, and others. It is impossible to understand differences in costs when there is the same mileage between provinces."
"We must emphasize the agreement of the contract, a fundamental document in which the interests of both parties must prevail, and the details must be established, including the price on this means."
"With urban transportation, our concern is growing and the truth is that we did not manage to give the injection we expected with the leased cars. Currently, up to seven have been allocated for that transportation, even so, it continues to be insufficient."
Luis Enrique Arias Peña, director of CARDINAL, adds that Las Tunas does not have a high level of leasing of its means, in comparison with other regions, because the strategy is to recover the state transportation with its efforts and provide the service. Quite a challenge when the differences in terms of foreign currency liquidity (and often in proactivity) between a state-owned company like this and the private sector that imports with its own capital are evident.
"Even when we face shortages of tires, batteries, and spare parts, we insist on rehabilitating our buses. We have 202 vehicles for passenger transportation, and 18 of them are leased, which were proposed to be retired," the executive emphasizes. None of them affects routes, because they were not included in the technical and economic plan. Of these 18, six are freight cars and 12 are passenger cars; in the latter group, five are in the hands of state entities and the rest provide inter-municipal service.
"At present, there are four buses proposed for decommissioning, in very poor technical condition, which were leased. In a period of three to four months, they will be supporting urban transport, but not before, because the repair is capital. When they are fit we will make a contract with the parties involved."
"We are going to propose to put a GPS to the entire fleet of this modality, to know location, speed..., and we have the support of the Ministry of Transportation for this. We want them to appear in the La Guagua application, and thus gain in the comprehensiveness of the proposal that will be offered to the population."
CHANNELING BENEFITS ONCE AND FOR ALL
The leasing of underutilized and out-of-operation means is in itself a measure that should benefit the transportation of people in its different variants, of course, under precise contracts that stipulate amounts and routes in favor of the popular demand.
From the direction of the sector in Las Tunas, the essential premise is outlined today that each new agreement includes its contribution to public transportation, and if it is a means of cargo, it will fulfill its task to natural persons and to the state universe, which will also mean valuable support.
Recently it was decided in the territory that all the entities of Transport would meet once a week to analyze the approaches of this dynamics; the Provincial Government also stipulated that future agreements must go through a consultation process to avoid the anomalies already narrated.
They warned that there is a wide demand from several agencies to rent cars, but the balance between interests will prevail because it is not possible to decapitalize the instances that have a fundamental social purpose to facilitate urban mobility.
And it was reaffirmed that the aforementioned legal regulation establishes the imperative of having control over the means, fuel consumed, maintenance, documentation, technical condition..., and the highest structures of the sector should be involved in these inspections.
Consideration should be given to the possibility that the buses leased by the state-owned companies, once their schedule has been fulfilled, pass through the stops at certain times and on the most demanded routes. Of course, as part of a contract and without neglecting their purpose.
The adjustments will seek to bring order to the current rarefied panorama, in which the vehicles do not have defined destinations, nor the place of departure, much less the price. And the drivers usually "walk" the empty buses in front of the long faces and needs of the passengers. Let's hope, now yes, their contribution to an activity that was born wrong, but that can be corrected for the better development of the people from Las Tunas with the pressing demand to travel.
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At the closing of this report, José Luis Ávila Verdecia, a specialist in Transportation Operations, assured 26 that the resolution issued on November 22 by the Ministry of Finance and Prices, which regulates the rates for services based on the kilometers traveled, came into force in the territory, to rectify the same and with the indication of reducing them, stipulating that they must be following the investment made and with a margin, only, of up to 15 percent of the profits.