Transport Inspectorate: Emergency inspection not possible after company closed its offices
Skopje, 26 November 2021 (MIA) – The State Transport Inspectorate yesterday couldn’t carry out an emergency inspection, despite making attempts, of the Besa Trans company, whose bus caught fire in Bulgaria killing 45 passengers. The company’s offices were closed and no one was answering the phone, its director Rufat Huseini told MIA.
Besa Trans, in addition to transportation services, is also a registered travel agency with offices in Skopje and Tetovo, which were all closed on Thursday.
No one is answering the phones, neither the company owner nor anyone in the officers, said Huseini.
“Now, we will send a written notification and schedule an appointment with the owner to wait for us and open the office. If he doesn’t receive the notification, then it will be handed over to him through the Interior Ministry,” he said.
After the deadly bus accident on Tuesday, the government tasked the Transport Inspectorate with conducting an emergency inspection of the company in line with the law, to determine whether it has obtained a license for free international transport of passenger, how many vehicles it has registered, whether they are licensed and in the company’s ownership and how many drivers it has hired.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Transport and Communication revoked Besa Trans’s work license after finding out that the bus carrying the passengers back to North Macedonia from a weekend trip to Istanbul hadn’t been registered in the Ministry’s e-database and had no license for transportation of passengers.
Also, measures have been announced against three customs officers because they didn’t register the bus exiting the country on the Macedonian-Bulgarian border on November 18.