Cityride bus service in Rotorua will introduce concession fares from July 1. Photo/File
RE: Taking the bus is not cheap (Letters, May 11).
Bay of Plenty Regional Council wants to increase bus patronage in an affordable and equitable way across the region, including Rotorua.
As such, late last year (November) the Bay of Plenty Public Transport Committee recommended making some fare changes on the Rotorua Bus network. These will come into effect from July 1 this year.
A key change is the introduction of fare concessions for the first time for children, students and seniors.
The Rotorua bus service currently charges a flat fare, while in comparison, Tauranga offers a concession fare to children, students and seniors. This is a development that we felt was important to make available in Rotorua.
This change will see smartride fares in Rotorua drop from $1.89 for concession groups to $1.34 although there will be a small increase to adult fares. Children under five will remain free.
We are focused on delivering an improved public transport network which will encourage regional patronage growth and compete with private vehicles in terms of convenience and reliability.
LYALL THURSTON
Bay of Plenty Public Transport Committee chairman
So, the basic wages is to be increased again. Does this now mean that employees will be on site ready to start work on time every day? They will not be coming across the car park or finishing a coffee and a ciggy out the back? They will be appropriately dressed, fit and alert, well rested and not hung over? Their cellphones will be left at home or locked up until knock off time? They will respect break time, including being promptly back from lunch hour? They will respect the company computer which is for company business not scrolling the internet in company time?
Now that they are being paid by the business, they will recognise the need to do a good job so the business will prosper so it can continue to pay them?
Skiving, shoddy workmanship and pilfering undermine a business and eventually lead to closure. The recent complaint that workers were underpaid by 15 minutes begs the question; how often were they 10 minutes late or spent 20 minutes checking their personal emails?
A man should be worthy of his hire and a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.
MARIE BOOTH
Rotorua
Almost 400 years ago the sciences of bacteriology and protozology were begun. Not as we might imagine, in a gleaming lab in Cambridge or Paris, nor among the floating dust-motes of some Middle Eastern minaret.
It was, bizarrely, among the product samples of a middle-class Dutch draper in the unremarkable town of Delft.
Antony van Leeuwenhoek, fanatical Christian and father of five, was curious enough about God's creation to invent his own world-leading microscopes and use them to discover protozoas and bacteria.
He was not a scientist, nor learned, nor versed in Latin, but he overturned the evolutionary idea of life-coming-from-non-life.
How? He described, from observation, the complete life-cycle of the smallest creatures, demonstrating that they came from eggs, rather than waste matter.
Today ironically, it is a man who reclaimed the idea of spontaneous generation, in popular literature, Mr Darwin in fact, who is revered and remembered, instead of the world's most complete and thorough microbiologist.
GJ PHILIP
Taupo
The wanton slaughter of unarmed civilians by the Israeli defence force is a modern day abhorrence.
The Palestinian desire to leave the ghetto/open air prison of Gaza is entirely understandable.
That half the population are children and 70 per cent are refugees from Israel's historical ethnic cleansing give this tragedy truly epic proportions.
I have informed all my suppliers that I will not purchase anything from Israel until this civilian population is given the chance of leaving the Gaza concentration camp.
To think that 97 per cent of the water supply provided to Gaza is unfit for human consumption and that the UN describes conditions as unliveable is a disgrace to Israel and all the global community who tolerate this genocide.
DR BERNARD CONLON
GP, Murupara