PTSC chairman clears the air on recent auction

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Chairman of the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC), Edwin Gooding, has dismissed as fake news, claims made in social media that PTSC literally gave away several company assets during an auction in December 2019.

Mr Gooding has confirmed that the bus company did in fact hold an auction on 12 December 2019, to sell off several ageing assets—34 items which PTSC could no longer use were made available for sale.

He said 14 items were sold, seven of which were buses.

“Our regulations require that our internal auditors will do the audit, and then we agree to the auction,” he explains. “In this case, the vehicles are written down to zero in our books. The auction is a public auction and people come there and they bid for the equipment or the buses [that are on offer].”

He adds: “Of the 14 that were sold, seven were omni-buses—the large buses. Five of them were over 25 years old and two of them were just about 20 years old. So these are old buses that we were no longer able to keep on the road.”

Edwin Gooding also stated categorically that PTSC would not have put on the auction block any bus which could still be used and working on the roads.

“The parts are removed from the buses before the auction,” he told us. “Any workable or useable parts that can be used on our other buses, they are removed first before the carcass is taken and cut up. We never sell an entire bus. Before it leaves our compound, it is cut up and moved in pieces as scrap. So there is no time any bus will drive out of the compound, having been sold by us,” he asserts. “We do not sell buses like that.”

The PTSC chairman also stated that the company’s books are audited by the Auditor General, annually, in keeping with their regulations for good corporate governance and transparency.