Several bus passengers were left to waiting at the Belize City Bus terminal this afternoon when six runs from Transit Belize were reportedly cancelled by the Belize City Council. Dextor Hemmans a driver for Belize Transit spoke to Love News that his runs were taken away because the bus he operates is too large.
DEXTOR HEMMANS
“This morning I was on my regular run and a traffic officer came and told the passengers on my bus that they have to come off and that we had to go and park by the Traffic Department and told me that our bus was too large to be running in the city. I asked Mr. Jenkins if this has been passed in law because everything has laws and he told me that is what they are doing within the City Council. They did send me a letter in 2011 but things are hard; one bus tire is eight hundred dollars much less to go and buy a bus for fifteen or twenty thousand dollars; we can’t afford that right now, we are barely making a living. We have been operating since 2008 and on a daily basis; we transport about 400 – 500 persons at one dollar per person and fifty cents for children. They cancelled six runs from this company; the Faber’s Road big bus, four buses for Boulevard and one from Lake Independence.
"This is rough; I have a loan that I have to pay for getting this bus and now I can’t even pay it; I want to know if they will help me pay my loan since they stopped my runs. Right now, there are a lot of children waiting for bus at the bus stop; the Haitians are still running their dollar van which they said they would have stopped from running but they are still running and some of them don’t even have license plates and now they stop my runs. I have been trying to contact the Mayor but he doesn’t want to talk to us; he told the media that they are making changes in the city and no bus that exceeds 30 passengers can run in the city and they don’t want any big bus on Albert Street anymore but I want to know which law states that this size bus cannot run in the city because you have big city buses all over the world. Only the transit company and Mr. Lemoth (the reggae bus); they told us that they would make us work the rush hour but we are still here waiting and they refuse to come out and tell us what we are to do; so, we will have to take it to court; that would be the next step.”