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News
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Volume 15,
Number 1 |
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in this section:
Diablo rojo bus art. Archive photo by Eric Jackson
Contract may be awarded, but new bus system won't start during Torrijos
administration
Bus purchase
bidding postponed due to allegedly flawed specs
by Eric Jackson
The purchase of diablo rojo buses
--- those old North American school buses imported, painted and pressed
into urban mass transit service in Panama --- may continue, but there is
litigation pending before the Supreme Court to block that process. (The
payment of $25,000 per bus plus route permit (cupo) in $400 per month
installments may work very well for a politically connected individual who
has accumulated a large fleet of buses despite the rules against that, but
it's a time-delayed ticket to unemployment for most bus driver/owners and
a promise mostly left to a new administration to keep or break.) To
ratchet up the pressure to accept, the government has special agents on
the streets to harass bus drivers who are rejecting the offer.
Now the other shoe of President
Torrijos's plan to eliminate the diablo rojo buses is coming off. The
January 15 bidding among as many as 37 companies that pre-qualified for a
contract to supply 420 buses to the government has been postponed. The
president announced the bidding process on January 7 but didn't get the
specifications for the bids posted eight days in advance to make the
process legal.
Hardly anyone has 420 large buses in
stock. To put in an order of this size with any of the world's reputable
manufacturers requires a six-month wait for delivery. That puts delivery
after Torrijos leaves office --- unless he has a friend or relative with
some buses stashed away and can write the specifications such that no
competitor can meet them.
These 420 buses are intended to
replace some 1,500 diablo rojo buses that serve the Panama - San Miguelito
metro area.
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