Passengers complain that intercity bus stops have not been selected properly
By Nushaba Fatullayeva
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Passengers often wait until the last minute to board the six hour trip to Ganja.
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As she holds her four year old son in her arms, Zeynab Guliyeva dashes off the Ganja-Baku bus upon arrival in Baku and races to the nearby restroom. Moments later, returning from the restroom to claim her luggage from the bus, Guliyeva blames the bus driver for causing her pain and discomfort.
“The bus made a stop in Ujar for 45 minutes within two hours of its departure from Ganja. During the remaining four hours we were not able to get off the bus. My child needed to go to the toilet for more than an hour. I feel ashamed to ask the bus driver to stop because of this reason,” Guliyeva complained.
Another passenger on the same bus, Adalat Hasanova, also complains that the bus stops at inconvenient locations between Ganja and Baku. “Every time I see fellow passengers express their objection to the stop in Ujar. If the bus stop in Ujar is of concern to passengers, I don’t understand why these buses make stops in that specific location,” Hasanova said.
Majnun Rafig, who has been working as a bus driver for more than 20 years, said the stop in Ujar doesn’t only concern passengers, but drivers, as well. He said that all drivers who travel to the western regions of the country are required to stop in Ujar. Rafig added that even though he and his fellow bus drivers objected to this on many occasions they were told “you have to stop in Ujar. This is the instruction from the top,” he said.
Rafig further explained that “both the management of the Baku and Ganja bus terminals instructed the drivers who drive this route to make a 45 minute stop in Ujar and five minute stops at the other three remaining stops.” Rafig said he gets complaints from passengers about that 45 minute stop at least on every other bus trip.
He says there is little that he and the drivers can do. “Those drivers who do not stop in Ujar are warned that they will not be given permission to enter the bus terminal. We are only allowed to enter the bus terminal after we present a paper confirming we stopped in Ujar,” he said.
The head of the economic department of the Number 20 Yanvar Bus Terminal, Abidin Matlab, confirmed that the 360 kilometer Baku-Ganja route consists of four bus stops with five minute stops in Hajigabul, Kurdamir, Yevlakh and a 45 minute stop in Ujar.
Matlab said these bus stops were determined by the Auto Transportation Service Department and that he was only the implementing agency. He said the routes were determined by taking into account passenger flow and profitability.
Nureddin Ismayilov, the chief shift manager at the Baku bus station said the complaints are irrelevant. “It is drivers who are concerned, not passengers. We built the modern bus station in Ujar, to serve the buses going from Baku all the way to Boyuk Kesik -- the settlement on the Georgian border. There are spare buses there, to be used in case of an emergency in other districts on the part of the route Kurdemir-Boyuk Kesik. The station in Ujar is very well monitored and bus drivers are upset that they cannot relax and drink alcohol there. That is the reason I think,” Ismayilov said. Ujar is almost half-way between Boyuk Kesik and Baku.
An employee at the Auto Transportation Service Department, who identified himself as Vidadi, but declined to give his last name, said that if passengers are concerned about stops in Ujar then they should express those concerns in writing to the Auto Transportation Service Department.
To read this story in Azeri, published "525", an Azerbaijan newspaper, click here!