Nicosia rural bus services to be fully restored by Tuesday

By Evie Andreou

ALL school bus routes of the southwest rural areas of Nicosia have been restored and the goal is by Tuesday to have a full service in the villages that were left without public transport all week, the public bus company OSEL’s general manager Andreas Athanasiades said on Friday.

Some 42 villages were left without a bus service since Monday, when OSEL shareholder Tasos Michaelides refused to run his buses until he saw actions taken against the company and those responsible for what he alleged of cooking the books, cheating the state over fuel and bus maintenance costs, and bribing officials.

OSEL had a court order issued on Tuesday against Michaelides and members of his family, ordering them to hand over the 27 buses and the Arediou bus station they occupied on Sunday. Michaelides, who still refuses to budge, had blocked the buses and the Arediou station on Tuesday when a trench was dug around the buses, preventing OSEL from recovering their fleet. Athanasiades said that the company is waiting for the police to step in as the court order provides for arrests of those who obstruct access to the buses.

On Friday, all bus routes transporting students were restored, he said, and the company is working on a plan aiming to restore a full service in the affected areas by Tuesday.

“Of course this arrangement will be temporary and it will be made possible with the help of other bus owners, but what will solve the problem is the return of the 27 OSEL buses which are still trapped,” Athanasiades said.

He said that the company is unable to recover the buses and are waiting for the police to make sure the court order is executed. “We can’t do anything else but wait”.

Meanwhile, transport minister Marios Demetriades said that disputes between shareholders is a private matter of the company but that this cannot the public of a bus service.

“They must resolve the problem as a company and keep their government contract obligations and restore the bus service,” Demetriades told state broadcaster CyBC. “We will not wait until the dispute between the shareholders is resolved”.

He said that he also contacted police chief Zacharias Chrysostomou as regards the recovery of the buses.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.