Bus route pass reset under scrutiny as old system appears to persist

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

Near­ly a year af­ter it was con­demned as a “free for all” and tar­get­ed for re­form, the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route pass sys­tem has been re­set, but of­fi­cial fig­ures show dis­tri­b­u­tion con­tin­ued un­changed through the tran­si­tion, rais­ing ques­tions about whether the sys­tem was ever fun­da­men­tal­ly over­hauled.

When Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar stood be­fore re­porters on May 22, 2025, she framed the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) pass sys­tem as one of po­lit­i­cal favours that had gone unchecked.

“A sim­ple thing as a bus route pass was be­ing used like a giv­en out Kiss cake or what you call it, cook­ies, you know, hops bread, bake, what­ev­er… this thing was like re­al­ly, lit­tle gifts with­out sub­stance,” she said.

Just a few weeks in­to her sec­ond stint as prime min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was paint­ing a pic­ture of cor­rup­tion and ex­cess un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, more specif­i­cal­ly un­der Ro­han Sinanan, then min­is­ter of works and trans­port.

What fol­lowed was a di­rec­tive to her Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion, Eli Za­k­our. She want­ed 645 PBR “let­ter per­mits” to be re­called by Ju­ly 1.

The cur­rent sys­tem would be re­placed by some­thing more ac­count­able and less vul­ner­a­ble to abuse.

Over the past six months, Guardian Me­dia sent out a se­ries of Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) re­quests, hop­ing to dis­cov­er a pic­ture of what fol­lowed and whether the man­date was met.

The re­call fell short of its orig­i­nal scope.

By the Ju­ly 1 dead­line, 132 pass­es had been hand­ed in.

At the same time, the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem did not pause. Be­tween Ju­ly 1 and Sep­tem­ber 15, 2025, 123 new PBR pass­es were is­sued.

By ear­ly 2026, the min­istry said 140 pass­es had been dis­trib­uted to pri­vate cit­i­zens, along­side 41 to Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and 30 to Sen­a­tors.

Za­k­our kept his promise and de­clined a per­mit and con­tin­ues to do so, ac­cord­ing to the min­istry’s re­sponse.

The min­istry con­firmed that 360 per­mits were even­tu­al­ly re­turned, well short of the 650 the Prime Min­is­ter said were out on the streets and man­dat­ed to be re­turned.

The min­istry said that some were re­turned vol­un­tar­i­ly, while oth­ers were re­cov­ered through the Tran­sit Po­lice, Traf­fic War­dens and the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty.

In oth­er words, pass­es could have been seized from ve­hi­cles on the Pri­or­i­ty Bus route it­self and re­turned to the min­istry.

The over­lap be­tween re­call and reis­suance rais­es a cen­tral ques­tion of who, ex­act­ly, end­ed up with the new pass­es.

That formed the ba­sis of the FOIA re­quests. Guardian Me­dia sought the names of in­di­vid­u­als who re­ceived new per­mits, along with ap­pli­ca­tion de­tails, is­suance dates, and whether re­cip­i­ents had pre­vi­ous­ly held pass­es. The aim was to de­ter­mine whether the sys­tem had been re­set or sim­ply re­cy­cled.

How­ev­er, the min­istry de­clined to pro­vide the names de­spite the fact that, dur­ing last May’s post-Cab­i­net brief­ing, egged on by her min­is­ters, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pub­licly named sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als she said held PBR pass­es.

Short­ly af­ter that May post-Cab­i­net con­fer­ence, an Ex­cel doc­u­ment was cir­cu­lat­ed list­ing the names and li­cence plate num­bers of 438 in­di­vid­u­als. The doc­u­ment al­so out­lined the oc­cu­pa­tions and stat­ed rea­sons for the pass­es, rang­ing from es­sen­tial ser­vices and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, pri­vate con­trac­tors and a cat­e­go­ry la­belled spe­cial re­quests.

In its re­sponse, the Trans­port Min­istry said re­leas­ing that in­for­ma­tion would amount to “un­rea­son­able dis­clo­sure” un­der the FOIA and could ex­pose the State to le­gal li­a­bil­i­ty by in­fring­ing pri­va­cy rights.

The min­istry would have to reach out in­di­vid­u­al­ly to hold­ers to ask for per­mis­sion to re­lease the in­for­ma­tion.

The re­sponse said ap­pli­ca­tion let­ters con­tain per­son­al de­tails, in­clud­ing con­tact in­for­ma­tion, li­cence plate num­bers and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments, plac­ing them with­in ex­emp­tions un­der the Act. It al­so in­di­cat­ed that redact­ing those doc­u­ments to al­low par­tial dis­clo­sure would re­quire sub­stan­tial hu­man re­sources.

In the fi­nal FOIA sub­mit­ted ear­li­er this month, the min­istry al­so out­lined how the ap­proved pass­es were dis­trib­uted across cat­e­gories: 47 for med­ical pur­pos­es, 62 for ex­e­cu­tion of du­ties, 24 for se­cu­ri­ty and sev­en for me­dia.

But as of March, ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, all of those pass­es are null and void, and the process starts all over again.

Af­ter mul­ti­ple FOIA re­quests, the min­istry re­vealed 27 of the ap­proved ap­pli­cants had pre­vi­ous­ly held PBR pass­es, but did not iden­ti­fy them or say when they would have re­turned their old pass­es and how soon af­ter they would have been is­sued new ones.

Since April 28, 2025, the Trans­port Min­istry has re­ceived 401 ap­pli­ca­tions for PBR pass­es. Of those, 140 were ap­proved un­der a sys­tem it de­scribed as elec­tron­ic, in­tro­duced on Ju­ly 31. An­oth­er 261 ap­pli­ca­tions re­main pend­ing due to in­com­plete doc­u­men­ta­tion. None were out­right de­nied.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Min­is­ter Za­k­our and the min­istry via What­sApp and email seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether the process for is­su­ing new Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route pass­es has been re­vised or re­mains un­changed, what lessons were learnt from the re­cent ex­er­cise and whether there is a quo­ta for the num­ber of per­mits to be is­sued. Up to press time, no re­sponse was re­ceived.

Pass­es man­dat­ed for re­call 645

Pass­es re­turned by Ju­ly 1 dead­line 132

To­tal pass­es even­tu­al­ly re­turned 360

New pass­es is­sued (Ju­ly 1 – Sept 15) 123

To­tal pass­es ap­proved (by ear­ly 2026) 140 (pri­vate cit­i­zens)

Pass­es is­sued to MPs 41

Pass­es is­sued to Sen­a­tors 30

Ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived since April 28 -401

Ap­pli­ca­tions ap­proved 140

Ap­pli­ca­tions pend­ing 261

Ap­pli­ca­tions de­nied 0

Re­cip­i­ents who pre­vi­ous­ly held pass­es 27