FOUR companies that lost out on the Island’s £30m bus contract all included extra money in their bids to pay bus drivers a £72 a week shift allowance that winners Connex left out, according to Senator Ted Vibert.

The Senator said he had spoken to the managing directors of the four other contract bidders and they all confirmed that their bids included about £230,000 to meet the costs of the shift allowance agreement.The companies, Anglia Coaches, Dunn Lines, Southern Vectis and Jersey Bus, have all told the Senator they were aware of the full extent of the wage claim and had included it in their costings.Controversy has raged over the shift allowance deal struck between the Transport and General Workers Union and former bus operators Jersey Bus as a result of claims made by officials responsible for awarding the contract.They contend they were not told about the need for the extra money until after Connex had been selected as the new bus company.Environment and Public Services Committee president Deputy Maurice Dubras accused the trade union of conniving to keep quiet about the shift allowance deal.

He also contended that it came as a ‘complete surprise’ to Connex that such a substantial claim had been submitted.As a result, he successfully persuaded the Finance and Economics Committee to hand over £187,000 more of taxpayers’ money to meet the outstanding liability.Senator Vibert has tabled numerous States questions about events leading up to the awarding of the bus contract and he is intent on bringing a vote of no confidence in the Environment and Public Services Committee for its handling of the issue.The Senator contends that if the Connex bid of £4,341,593 a year for seven years had included both the extra shift allowance and another significant sum for provision of relief buses, it would have been £475,000 a year higher.It emerged that Connex contended that their bid did not include a sum for providing relief buses but the company was told by Environment and Public Services that it should have done and as a result no extra money was made available to meet that claim.Dunn Line’s contract bid of £4,349,240 a year for seven years was just over £7,000 more than the bid put in by Connex, while the Jersey Bus bid was about £250,000 higher than that of Connex.

Senator Vibert contends that if the bids had been made on a like-for-like basis, then Dunn Line and Jersey Bus would have been the two companies who would have been most likely to be selected.’Anglia’s bid of £3,908,248 a year was considered to be too cheap and unrealistic whereas the Southern Vectis bid of £5,428,000 was too expensive to consider,’ said the Senator.He added: ‘The more information I uncover from the other tenderers makes me more convinced than ever that States Members have been misled over this issue.’