According to announcements, Tuzla could be left without public registration on Sundays. This is explained by the reduced need for transportation that day. After stormy reactions, the decision was temporarily extended. By the way, Tuzla is a unique example of a private company providing public transport services, and it is also known for the most expensive tickets.
The news that the company “City and Suburban Transport” Tuzla will no longer provide public transport services on Sundays caused different reactions among passengers.
“It’s not normal, I’ve never heard that. There are always three or four a day, but now I don’t know how it should be. I can’t believe it”; “What are you going to do, no, no. To be healthy is for us, just to be healthy”, are just some of the comments of citizens.
The mentioned company claims that, in accordance with the market situation, it wants to ensure financial stability and continue to provide quality services to passengers.
“The need for public passenger transportation on Sundays is significantly lower than during the rest of the week. Namely, workers, students and pupils who are our most frequent users do not use transport on Sundays because it is a non-working day. Additionally, with the entry into force of the new Law on Internal Trade in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which defined that Sunday is a non-working day for shopping centers and commercial facilities, the number of public transport users further decreased.”
The Commission for Human Rights of the City of Tuzla responded to this and received a response from the company that the decision would be temporarily invalidated. The relevant cantonal ministry has not yet received a request to change the timetable, and if a request comes, there will be no lack of reaction.
Nenad Lukanović, Ministry of Transport TK:
“We will sit down in the ministry and consider and make a decision whether we will approve that timetable, in accordance with the obligations, that is, in accordance with the public function performed by the carrier. So the public service has to be maintained in some kind of reduced scale, but it has to be maintained even on Sundays.”
Tuzla has six urban and nine suburban lines. GIPS is the only carrier in the city, while eleven other carriers come from other municipalities and cities in Tuzla, also private ones over which the city has no control. The study of public line traffic has been completed and its presentation to the City Council is expected in March, and two models of solutions are proposed.
Miralem Mulać, Office for Communal Affairs of the City of Tuzla:
“To go for the formation of a public company that would perform the function of transportation in a narrow, urban area, and there is a possibility to engage some other companies.”
Bringing public transport back into the framework of state capital and forming a public company is not an easy task, but it is clearly necessary. The deadlines for that are very optimistic.
Miralem Mulać, Office for Communal Affairs of the City of Tuzla:
“How much effort we need to fulfill it. It seems like a long period until the end of the year, but it is short for the formation of that nucleus of a public company. But we will do everything to work in that direction.”
Omer Berbić, Councilor of the City Council:
“I think that we, to be pessimistic, will solve a certain part of public city traffic by the middle of this mandate. I hope that by the end of the year we will be able to acquire up to three new buses that we will put at the service of citizens.”
This initiative is supported by GIPS itself, offering the City or Canton to take over the entire management without fees and that the ticket prices be the same as in other cities, stressing that the company has never received subsidies. Until this saga is resolved, citizens are waiting for a solution and buses.
Source: N1
