MILLWOOD
John Myers Jr., Staff Reporter
LAWYERS REPRESENTING the Ezroy Millwood-led National Transport Co-operative Society (NTCS) yesterday said they were expecting in excess of $12 billion in payment from Government arising from an arbitration award handed down on Tuesday for breach of contract.
Ezroy Millwood, president of the NTCS, while not expecting to be paid in a lump sum, warned that "I certainly would not compromise ...in respect of pay ...the whole payment purpose must be negotiated."
"Nobody expects the Govern-ment to draw a cheque, although ideally that's what we would have preferred, but once there is a reasonable proposal it will be considered," added Patrick Bailey, one of the two attorneys-at-law who represented the bus company.
The value of the award to the NTCS was calculated for each of the seven years extending from 1995 to 2001. It totalled just over $4 billion with interest payable at commercial bank lending rates and Treasury Bill rates.
Dr. Trevor Hamilton, consultant to the NTCS, explained to journalists attending a press conference yesterday at the Terra Nova Hotel that "we came up with a figure of $12.5 billion..." calculated at a rate of interest of 25 per cent using the straight line method.
He said the money would accrue interest at a rate of $8 million for each day it remained unpaid. Mr. Hamilton stressed, however, that the figure was preliminary and a more definite figure would be released in the next three days.
The NTCS filed a suit in the Supreme Court against the Government in August 2000 seeking $3.7 billion in damages as compensation for breach of the bus franchise agreement following its take over of the public
transportation system in the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region (KMTR). This came five years after the Co-op and two other independent bus operators had signed a 10-year agreement with Government which would see them running the bus service until March 2005.
As settlement, the Government had offered the NTCS $172 million with approximately $72 million of that sum being for the remaining four-and-a -half-years of the contract and the remainder for the 400 buses in its fleet. The offer was rejected by the NTCS. Apart from the NTCS which controlled the Portmore and Northern routes there were Conurban Transit Ltd., which controlled Spanish Town and Papine and Metropolitan Transport in charge of the eastern routes which terminated downtown Kingston.
To the question of the Government appealing the award, Mr. Bailey asserted that "unless there is a substantial error in applying the law, it seems to me that there will be no merit to any appeal".
He added that "the heads of the arbitration had a stipulation that the award would be binding on both parties", therefore, the Government has to pay. He noted that the possibility of applying the law wrongly in this case was minimal, considering the distinguished panel of arbitrators. The arbitration panel was made up of retired Court of Appeal judge, Justice Boyd Carey (chairman), retired President of the Court of Appeal, Hon. Ira Rowe and attorney-at-law Angela Hudson-Phillips, QC.
According to Mr. Bailey, at the time of the take over, the Government had agreed that it "would compensate the NTCS for the unexpired portion of the franchise agreement, acquire the buses and set up a second fare table which would enable the NTCS to realise a 15 per cent margin on its capital outlay." He said the Government did not honour the agreement.
The NTCS currently has 335 members, representing 410 buses or 14,000 seats. Mr. Millwood said payment to members of the Co-op would be made based on the number of seats. He said the Co-op would be using the money to improve aspects of its service and would donate a portion to an unnamed charity.
