Bula Vinaka shoppers, There has been a lot of talk about the bus eTransport system. There are those that are for it and those that are not.
The ones that complain find something inconvenient about it. They either have simple phones, cannot transfer funds from the old to the new or went when the cards were out of stock. Colleague Serafina said recently she could not get a yellow card for her son because it was out of stock from the provider Vodafone.
During the period the yellow card was not available, she was forced to get her son to use a red card, and this meant she was budgeting for full adult fare for him while he commuted daily to and from school.
That was why when the Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said last week the Government was considering calls to reintroduce cash payments for bus fares alongside the e-ticketing system, there was a sigh of relief from some members of our community. But that has not happened.
People feel it is the right thing to do to allow some ease among the travelling public who continue to air their frustrations about this system and its flaws eight years after it was first introduced by the previous government when Fiji was moving towards a cashless society.
Responding in The Fiji Times’ ‘A Conversation with the PM’ column to a letter from Edward Blakelock of Pacific Harbour, who argued that 100 per cent e-ticketing was impractical until key challenges are addressed, Mr Rabuka said the Government recognised the concerns from members of the public who had issues.
He acknowledged the views expressed by Blakelock that a one-size-fits-all digital approach was still ‘work in progress’ for us here in Fiji.
Mr Rabuka assured the public that the Government was working towards addressing this e-Transport issue.
“Government acknowledges the call to re-introduce the cash payment system.” For this new system, the cards support offline top-ups and other options like QR Pay and M-PAiSA. It also protects drivers who were previously at risk of being robbed when handling cash.
There has since been talks that the Government will also engage Digicel Fiji as another service provider to expand available platforms and offer more payment options.
Those who rely on buses to get to work, school, and home hope the Government will first provide efficient, fair and accessible public transport options for all. In the meantime, the PM has asked members of the public to report any e-ticketing card issue to Vodafone on 155.
Another colleague Anaseini said she had to provide an ID and pay $3 for a new eTransport card as she had lost her old one.
Her son attends pre-school up the road from Butt St and they spend around $8.84 on bus fares in a day.
“In a day we spend about $8.84 on bus fares. $2.21 per person on each trip. I usually travel with him every morning from Nausori to Suva and my aunt does the pickups every afternoons after school.”
She now enjoys using the new eTransport card, but it took her a while to know about the extra functions which is convenient to learn.
“It took me awhile, to learn about the extra functions as I used to hear about it from my workmates but didn’t pay much attention, until I stayed home and forced myself to know about these functions which really helps.
“Rather than travelling to Nausori Town for bus card top ups, I am topping it up from the comfort of my own home. Also, I am someone who relies on the MPAISA App and learning the additional functions has been helpful and convenient.
She says it would be nice if cash payments were also accepted because some areas did not have top up machines and people were forced to travel far paying extra just to get it done – “that is concerning and why I think it’s ideal to allow cash too.”
She feels for students who are paying adult fares because they are using red cards and those denied a ride because they’ve past their hours of yellow card usage.
Despite mounting public complaints and growing calls for more flexibility in this e-ticketing system, the Fiji Bus Operators Association (FBOA) claims the system has had a 99.9992 per cent success rate with 676,888,510 completed ‘Trips Per Tap’ since its introduction in 2017.
FBOA consultant Mick Beddoes told our newspaper the numbers they’ve acquired tell a different story from the one often portrayed in the media and on social media platforms.
“A large per cent of the country has transitioned to a ‘cashless’ economy, and e-ticketing has come through an eight-year transition, so e-ticketing is here to stay,” Mr Beddoes said.
“Over this time, operators have experienced a dramatic improvement in their ‘income retention’ so I would suggest it is not ‘resistance’ but sound ‘common business sense’ not to revert to any cash-based options.” Vodafone says it has “successfully issued” 427,000 new eTransport cards and that 321,000 of these have been used at least once by commuters.
Meanwhile, the red and yellow cards are now fully in stock again according to Vodafone Fiji, when contacted this week.
So if you are still waiting to get yours or your child’s eTransport card done hurry now to any Vodafone outlet while the stocks last.