Arriva failed to pay €1.3 million in penalties issued in 2013

Arriva, the former public transport operator has so far failed to pay €1,332,650 out of the €1.8 million in penalties issued by Transport Malta in 2013, transport minister Joe Mizzi said.

In reply to a parliamentary question by opposition MP Toni Bezzina, Mizzi said that to date Arriva had only paid €487,550 in penalties issued by the regulator.

Moreover, the minister said that a further €808,650 in penalties which were issued between August and December, were not issued by Transport Malta following the suspension of the articulated buses. He explained that Transport Malta had intended to issue the penalties once the negotiations between the two parties ended.

In January, government entered into an agreement with Arriva's mother company, Deutsche Bahn AG Group to transfer the entire company to Transport Malta and a new national company.

The national public transport company that took over the Arriva Malta operations earlier this year, Malta Public Transport Services Ltd, has already absorbed €7.9 million in total debts when it took over Arriva Malta for a nominal €1.

The financial statements tabled in the House of Representatives, submitted on 2 January 2014 by PricewaterhouseCoopers, paint a dismal picture of the state of the public transport operator. The accounts show that Arriva was forecasting an operating loss of €4.3 million for 2013 but the company actually registered a loss of €18.7 million as of November 2013.