The provincial government reached an agreement in principle to advance with a negotiating table with the Metropol company and the UTA regarding the business strike that has several lines managed by that company without service, among which is the Costera that joins La Plata with the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. As of the agreement signed this Thursday by the head of the Transport portfolio Jorge D’Onofriotogether with the Manager of Institutional Technical Relations of Metropol, Luciano Fusaroand the general secretary of the UTA, Roberto Fernandez, from midnight the circulation of units will be normalized for 72 hours in which an attempt will be made to reach a definitive agreement.
As has been reported, the company that connects La Plata and CABA meets the third day of strike this Thursday. As they had assured through a statement, The measure is due to “the repeated failure of the Ministry of Transportation of the Nation to the judicial measure issued in favor of Metropol -ratified today by the judge in the case-, to which is added the delay in the payment of compensation”. Within this framework, it is that lines 65, 90, 151, 194 and 195 interrupted their services, while lines 176, 237, 276, 310, 326 448, 507, 510B and 670 progressively reduced it, “due to lack of resources to operate”.
The minutes signed now, considered by the Minister as a “principle of agreement” to start discussing the different aspects related to the conflict. “We have reached an agreement in principle to set the negotiating table so that the pending conflicts can be resolved,” explained D’Onofrio and assured that “The company undertakes to restore the service from 0 hours”.
“From the Buenos Aires Ministry of Transportation we are committed to finding the necessary channels of dialogue to resolve the issues and that the services are normalized as soon as possible,” added the official.
In turn, the Minister stated: “This conflict is an economic issue. There is a judge who 20 months ago issued a precautionary measure and did not provide a substantive solution. The province of Buenos Aires does not participate in the liquidation of the subsidies, but only pays what the Nation indicates”, and highlighted: “We people from Buenos Aires are the main victims, because 66% of the companies’ vehicle fleet works within PBA and the rest, which are national lines, also transport mostly Buenos Aires citizens.
Likewise, D’Onofrio explained: “When a service is not provided, as a public official I have the duty to activate all notices, from fines to expiration. Metropol today is showing the will to recover the service”, and concluded: “I appreciate the goodwill of the company and the union, for having found this area so that people, which is the only thing that matters, can travel again without problems ”
In this context, the UTA (represented by Roberto Fernandez) also “commits to accompany all the necessary measures so that the service can be sustained” and they remarked that the ministry will establish “the necessary channels of dialogue so that the underlying issues can be resolved and there is no threat of new cuts”. .
On behalf of the company, the representative who participated in the meeting, Luciano Fusaro, indicated that the situation continues to be “very precarious” but that they have “the will to always provide services.” “We have resorted to assistance within our value chain in order to financially count the resources and thus resume services from 00 tomorrow,” he reported.
In the same sense, he assured that “in more than 27 years in the AMBA” they had never “been through a situation like this” and that they agreed “to this type of solution knowing that the underlying situation has not yet been resolved” because their ” vocation is always to provide public services and find ways to find solutions”.
