Bus shortage plagues northern region transport system

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 February 2006, 13:54 GMT]
Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) has sent only five buses to Northern Region Transport Board (NRTB) instead of fifty as promised. The SLTB made an order with a foreign firm to import two thousand buses to be distributed among various depots in the island. Only three hundred out of 2000 buses have arrived in Colombo, sources said..

Jaffna SLTB depot needs one hundred fifty buses to bring the bus service in peninsula to normalcy after two-decade-old war and 2004 tsunami disaster, sources said

Under NRTB administration five sub depots, Jaffna, Karainagar, Point Pedro, Mannar and Vavuniya are functioning. NRTB sources said that it would distribute the five buses one to each of the sub-depots.

Majority of the buses, which are put in service in the northern region, are more than 15 to 30 years old. Eleven buses, which have been condemned beyond repair, are currently lying in the Jaffna main depot, sources said.