SANA’A, Aug. 12 — The Land Transportation Company announced it will resume travel at the end of Ramadan after a more than two year suspension of work due to technical defects and a shortage of spares.

"We will resume travel at approximately the end of Ramadan via five buses,” Jamal Al-Shawbali, the Land Transportation Company general manager in the capital city, said. “We are now working to fix the defects. We still have a team of 15 buses that require high technical fixing and spares so as to operate anew."

He added that, as a government institution and an “effective partner in development,” the government should be held responsible for the company.

“The government should provide us with engineers to fix the buses and provide us with spares,” Al-Shawbali said.

He said the Finance Ministry still pays the salaries of the Land Transportation Company’s employees as a temporary solution until travel resumes so that the institution can autonomously fund itself.   

Nassr Al-Harbi, the Economic Department deputy at the Ministry of Finance, said certain procedures and solutions that could contribute to restoring the activities of the company were agreed on. The goal is to help the company depend on its own resources.

"It was decided that the institution's subsidiary land be sold in order to purchase a flotilla of buses that could help resume travels in addition to paying off the debts,” Al-Harbi said.

The debts owed by the institution to the Finance Ministry are estimated at 80 million riyals, and it is comprised in part of employee salaries for four years, let alone its debts to the Ministry of Electricity and Energy, Water Public Corporation and other private ones, Al-Harbi explained.

Saleh Al-Wali, the head of Land Transportation Authority at the Ministry of Transportation, said, “We are partly responsible; we will provide buses in support of the institution's flotilla. We agreed with a Kuwaiti-Saudi Company to provide the institution with buses ... First, we want to support and qualify them."

"The institution has a qualified, excellent staff able to create partnerships with the private sector, improve its flotilla, establish technical research centers and create job vacancies once restored," Al-Wali said.