Inter-ship transport fails, transporters have no accounts of working with few travelers

Although measures to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus have been eased yesterday and transports with special permits have been allowed, there are no buses or travelers seen today in Pristina.

The Travelers' Road Transport Association is seeing as impossible the application of the measures required for bus operation. According to them, there will be more losses if they continue to maintain regular lines with such restrictions than not at all. This association views it as meaningless that inter-urban transport has been released until citizens continue to have limited movement.

Bus station chief Luan Hoti said he has made all preparations to start operating travel lines, but that he added that today there have been no flow of travelers, nor of regular bus buses.

The reason he said may be that citizens continue to have limited movement.

And you can see that today there is an influx or there is no flow of travelers at all, but there are no buses that are scattered on regular lines that have... maybe it's about the decision that conflicts with limiting people's movement, because if you take a case if a traveler wants to travel from Peja to Pristina, if he has the restriction until he comes to Pristina, he ends. So he must either stay on the bus or be in the bus station. There's a co-ordination between the rules in effect with the decision that has been issued. But it's not up to me to judge this, but as a result, it's seen that there are no buses and no passengers”, he said.

Road Transport Association member Jakup Berisha told Kosova Preiss that they cannot circulate, as citizens continue to have limited movement in just two hours.

According to him, they caused the shortage of travelers to occur and in this way, he said more losses would have if they kept the lines regular.

“The travelers don't have, because a Peje traveler has two hours to come to Pristina and from Peje until he comes to Pristina he spends the time he had free. What's even more serious for us as operators that we can't establish for employees or for ourselves company owners, because interurban transport has been meant for the third phase and in the FDI program of the ATK platform doesn't exist for any transport company that we can attract to workers”, he said.

As the association, he said they are seeking to be subsidised by the state if they want to have interurban transport. According to him, the state must pay for the chairs that will remain untapped.

“For chairs that we've been usurped according to WHO rules, it means 50 percent of the chairs are usurped, we don't have the right to landing passengers, for that part the state has to subvent transport if we want to have transportation at the country level... We have to think about finding the way or the previous miles of buses or the seating of chairs that had been evacuated under WHO rules... transporters lose less by staying tomorrow than working on these conditions. It's very dangerous, there's no chance of 22 to 25 covering expenses and salaries and oil, only the driver's salary and oil can't be extracted under these conditions, he said.

The relief of measures to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus began yesterday.