People with a CUD or INCUCAI certificate enter the reservation site of the National Transport Regulation Commission (CNRT) and request the ticket with the
date and destination they require. Once the reservation is confirmed, they receive the ticket online. Each month, then, the Ministry should pay the bus companies compensation for the tickets delivered. That compensation, however, has a maximum weight assigned. If the number of tickets requested is more than the compensation fund, the company will not receive any compensation for that.
Every year, about 1.5 million free tickets are provided by long-distance bus companies to people with some type of disability, their companions and transplanted people, allowing them to travel free of charge, as many times as they wish and to any of the more than 1600 destinations linked by road transport in Argentina.
This generates an impact on bus companies due to non-perceived income of more than 10,000 million pesos per year. On average, bus companies deliver more than 95,000 free tickets each month for a real market value of around 1,000 million pesos. However, of this extraordinary contribution, the National State barely compensates a percentage less than 10%.
“They are pushing us to make a decision that we try in every way to avoid. Citizens must understand that not only do we undertake this effort alone (the flag airline, for example, receives billions of pesos in subsidies and does not provide even 1 ticket) but also that we are not even able to collect what we have promised. Consequently, in transport with zero subsidy like ours, these costs end up making the final price of the ticket more expensive and harming our passengers,” said Gustavo Gaona, spokesman for the Long Distance Business Chamber (CELADI).
CELADI affirms that the Ministry of Transport of the Nation owes 10 months, for which they ask that the debt be regularized and some mechanism for updating the compensation values be established, eliminating the maximum monthly limits, otherwise they affirm that they will be forced to discontinue immediately the delivery of gratuities.