Commuters from the northern part of the island were left fuming on Tuesday as they waited for over an hour for buses to arrive. When the buses did arrive, they were at full capacity and did not stop at the bus stops.

A passenger told The Malta Independent that when he had finally managed to board a bus after waiting an entire hour, the driver told indignant passengers that they should direct their woes towards Transport Minister Joe Mizzi, as he was the one "who decided to reduce the number of trips."

Frequent bus passengers who spoke to this paper said that they had experienced the same thing on a number of occasions in the past couple of weeks. Sources said that the lack of buses is linked with the introduction of the winter schedule, which came into effect on 18 October.  

In comments to this paper, Malta Public Transport did not deny that the number of trips had been reduced, but insisted that frequencies would be increased in the coming days as part of the changes the company is bringing into effect.

"In the coming weeks, the company will be implementing various changes to the route network in Malta, which includes additional frequencies in a number of areas, and improvements in the overall level of service. This had been held back since September by the two major unions who have issued contradictory prohibitory injunctions stopping the company from discussing a new collective agreement which would improve employee conditions and the service itself."

MPT said it was doing all it could to cope with the demand. "The company is operating additional services with extra buses to cope with demand, but given that most timetables have not changed since 2011, the service cannot operate efficiently, and we apologise for this. We managed to implement the necessary changes to the route network last weekend in Gozo, and we plan to continue with the improving the service in Malta over the coming weeks. This will be to the benefit of both the employees - as the timetables will be more efficient - and the public, as more buses will operate on various routes."