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Karl Schembri
Almost a year since the bus ticketing machines were installed, the disappearance of Lm160,000 from the Public Transport Association’s revenue remains a mystery.
An inquiry launched last December by former Transport Minister Censu Galea into the shocking drop in ticket sales after the first four months of the system remains inconclusive.
So far, everything has pointed to an abuse of the bus ticketing system by drivers, ticket sellers and some commuters, with Galea himself saying that it was impossible for the Public Transport Association (bus owners) to lose so many patrons in four months to lose Lm160,000 in ticket sales.
Now, the new Transport Minister, Jesmond Mugliett, says some of the loss “can be attributed to the wilful or un-wilful misuse of the ticketing machines,” but he says this is “difficult to quantify,” let alone to lead to abusers.
Association President Victor Spiteri had warned publicly that two buttons on the new machines – the ‘inspector’ button and the ‘annul’ button – were being used repeatedly by cunning drivers to issue false tickets and keep the money for themselves.
Investigations proved him right and eventually, after months of procrastination, the Transport Authority eliminated the function of the buttons. These two blatant abuses were already occurring in the first nine days since the new ticketing system was introduced.
One case of tampering with the ACE chip by a driver (ACE chips keep a record of ticket sales for every bus) has been passed on to the police, the minister said, and two similar cases “are expected to be forwarded to the police over the coming weeks.”
Mugliett said: “Tampering with ACE chips on board the buses means that recordings of takings can be wiped out and lost permanently.”
Ticket vending machines were another breeding site for fraudsters. “Ticket vending machines have been turned into jackpots,” Spiteri had warned last year.
This is because the machines used to accept 50c coins (in contrast with all other kinds of vending machines in Malta that don’t) which can be easily substituted by foreign coins.
The authorities’ investigations again proved Spiteri right.
“Following discussions between the supplier, the transport authority and the transport association, the necessary modifications were carried out on the machines to accept 25 cents coins instead of 50 cents coins,” the minister said.
Surprisingly, however, a somewhat new explanation is now being given to the ‘disappearance’ of the Lm160,000 by the new minister, which Spiteri dismissed as “nonsense.”
“Before jumping to hasty conclusions on the fate of the Lm160,000, it should be noted that a change from one revenue collecting system to another and the consequent introduction of new practices is always bound to have an affect on cash flow,” Mugliett told MaltaToday. “It should be mentioned that during the initial months of the setting up of the system, the ACE chips used in the machines had no upper limit set.
“This resulted in a considerable amount of money being temporarily held by the drivers and not passed on to the Association of Public Transport (Bus owners). The larger part of these funds had not actually disappeared but was ‘masked’ by the change in the ticketing system and the introduction of new practices in the recording of takings by the ATP.
“Following initial investigations…the software was amended and an upper limit of Lm200 was set on the ACE chips. Consequently, all the drivers were re-called and ACE chips downloaded. In fact, in the subsequent months from February 2004 to date, there was an increase in revenue when compared to the same months of the previous year.”
The minister said the new system is different to the previous one whereby the Association would obtain money from ticket sales even before the tickets were actually sold to commuters.
“In fact, in the past, drivers used to pay for and collect the tickets in packets to eventually sell to the commuters,” the minister said. “After the introduction of the bus ticketing machines, the Association obtains its money only after the actual sale of the individual ticket is made and following the download of the ACE by the driver.”
But according to the bus owners’ association, this is all nonsense.
“We had the Lm200 limit on our credit from day one, so the minister’s explanation is totally incorrect,” the Transport Association president, Victor Spiteri, said. “There were only six ACE chips that were accepting more than Lm200 initially, but these were repaired.”
The minister says that the Lm200 credit limit “leaves a maximum exposure of Lm104,000 (Lm200 x 508 buses in the fleet) which can be the maximum amount of cash in hand at any one time.”
Spiteri said that with a Lm200 credit limit, drivers can only work a maximum of five days, after which they are bound to reach the credit limit be forced to download the data on their ACE chips.
“So one definitely cannot argue, as the minister is trying to do, that the Lm160,000 are ‘masked’ or out there waiting to be collected,” Spiteri said. “This is pure hogwash.”
The new system, contracted to Alberta Fire Fighting & Security Equipment Ltd, cost more than Lm1 million to install.
Official documentation, acknowledged by both the Transport Ministry and the Malta Transport Authority (ADT), shows that the system’s faults and the ongoing abuses from at least nine days after the ticketing system was launched was well-known to the authorities.
The former minister had ordered an inquiry after Spiteri’s warnings of abuse were reported in the press, and he had also promised to make the transport authority’s investigations public as soon as they were concluded.
Spiteri said that no inquiry was held at all, but the authority simply started monitoring the system to cut abuses.
“Unless they conduct a proper inquiry and give us all the downloaded data from day one we will never know where the Lm160,000 ended and in whose pockets,” Spiteri says.
Mugliett says the investigation is still ongoing and it “can only be concluded after the system has been in operation for a period of one year,” after which the authority would have all the data to be able to make comparisons with the previous years.
“You may rest assured that should it transpire that the system had actually been abused, legal action will be sought against the person involved,” the minister said.
If the Lm160,000 remain unaccounted for, the government will have to fork the sum out in subsidies, given that it is committed to cover shortfalls in revenue.
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