Commission urges PMV operators to seek approval for fees

PMV operators should not charge fees as they please but seek approval from the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) first, says commissioner and chief officer Paulus Ain.
Ain said this following questions raised by some operators in Lae about increasing their fares for some routes without prior approval from ICCC.
“Before ICCC could come up with fares, they must know exactly the cost involved in running a PMV at a particular route and that cost has to come from PMV owners through the PMV associations,” he said.
He gave an example that owners must give information such as how many PMVs they owned and the cost involved in running the PMV over a period of one year.
“After ICCC received those information, it will work out PMV fares for each route for five years and that fare will also include the fuel cost as well as the exchange rate.”
Ain said the ICCC depended entirely on the information that was provided by PMV owners throughout the nation to come up with a satisfying fare that operators as well as the public were comfortable with. “We will not guess and come up with any figures to impose on PMVs and tell them to accept it but it should come from the figures that were provided by the owners’ end that the ICCC will assess other aspects as well and come up with a final fare for individual routes,” he said.
“Sometimes we found out that the fares we put in place are less when considering road conditions and other factors.”