Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): Bus services in Caracas were disrupted Thursday as owners and operators dug in their heels on a recent fare increase to Bs.Fs.1.20 -- and won the day when Infrastructure Minister Isidoro Rondon intervened in their dispute with the national terrestrial transport institute (INTTT) which ordered them to cut that by a third.
The Venezuelan Unitary Transport Federation (FUTV) had openly defied INTTT after it ordered that fares should be cut to Bs.F. 0.80 in line with a statement published in the Official Gazette.
The message was that INTTT was sticking its nose in where it did not belong. "It corresponds to the municipalities to set the fare and not the INTTT," said FUTV president Jose Betancourt. The tariff wouldn't be modified and there'd been a mistake in the Official Gazette, he told reporters after a meeting at the Infrastructure Ministry. Afterwards, Rondón confirmed there'd been an error and said the new fare would stay.
Bus drivers' leader Jose Luis Montoya claimed early in the day that the number of bus journeys in the west of the capital was down by 90 percent, citing routes through Catia, Gramoven, El Junquito, La Silsa and San Pedro. But factors other than the level of fares were at issue in the west of the city. Drivers were also protesting against the murder of yet another of their colleagues by gunmen.
Unofficial estimates suggest at least 25 drivers have been killed while working in west Caracas and the eastern outstretches of the city this year so far. The string of killings has sparked several protests with drivers blocking highways with barricades of buses.
While drivers stayed away in violent western Caracas, numerous buses still ran elsewhere in the city. By mid-morning in Chacao, there were no long queues or scrambling to get on as this reporter went to work. If anything, there seemed to be fewer passengers, suggesting that some people gave up before they'd even tried.
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