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| By: Israel Insider staff |
| Published: August 16, 2007 |
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A recent decision to discontinue the public transportation security unit - a unit which has actively served to protect Israel's public from suicide bus attacks since the second Intifada - has generated opposition from both bus companies and Israel Police, reported Maariv Thursday.
Though the report cited the sharp decline in suicide bus attacks as the reason for the unit's discontinuance, it also referenced Transportation Ministry sources as blaming the Finance Ministry for the shutdown.
The Finance Ministry allegedly closed the unit due to cost concerns.
Ron Ratner, spokesman for the Israeli bus company, Egged, rejected the the cost of running the unit was grounds for its termination.
"The cost of maintaining the unit's operations is only NIS 80m a year. We will act to prevent the unit's closedown," he was quoted as saying by Maariv.
A top Egged source cited the security unit as a main reason for the increase in bus use, and as vital to passengers feeling safe.
"This is scandalous," he said. "In the past year and a half there has been a marked rise in the number of travelers who use public transportation - thanks to their sense of security."
"A pen pusher in the Finance Ministry, who last rode a bus when he was a little boy on a school field trip and has been driving an executive car ever since, hasn't an inkling of the essentialness of the unit to passengers' sense of security," he added.
The public transportation security unit was created during the second Intifada, and is set to shut down by September 1. The unit has successfully affected a major decline in suicide attacks on buses since its conception. |
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