JUTC getting rid of 60 derelict buses
Published:Sunday | September 13, 2015 | 12:00 AMChristopher Serju
The Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) Limited is looking to get rid of 60 derelict buses, which it is offering for sale on an 'as is where is' basis as scrap metal.
In a newspaper advertisement yesterday, the company invited tenders for the vehicles, with a site visit to its Rockfort depot scheduled for tomorrow. One of the conditions is that successful bidders will be required to remove buses from the present storage area within a specified time, at no cost to the JUTC.
JUTC Managing Director Colin Campbell told The Gleaner that the exercise is necessary in order to get rid of vehicles which have served their usefulness and are now essentially junk.
Campbell also noted that buses such as one that caught fire in downtown Kingston and another that suffered a similar fate on Washington Boulevard would be among those up for sale.
"We do this every now and again because once buses reach a certain age, we retire them. We take off all the valuable parts from them. What's left is basically the shell, which we sell as scrap metal," Campbell explained.
However, as part of the process the Board of Survey in the Ministry of Finance must first come in to do a physical examination of the vehicle and give the OK for them to be written off the company's books.
The managing director, however, is not optimistic that the JUTC will recoup much money from the sale.
"No, because in the last bid, we probably got about $30,000 because it goes by the weight, and I guess scrap price is down right now. So, we just go to tender and then people offer a price in the normal way and we look at it and accept," he told The Gleaner.