Buses grind to halt in Venezuela's spare parts crisis

CARACAS: All William Faneite needed to keep driving his old bus in Caracas was a new carburetor. Surely, in a city of two million people, that couldn't be hard to find?

But getting his hands on a spare took four months -- par for the course in an economic crisis that has seen one in two public buses in Venezuela grind to a halt.

Filling a bus's tank with petrol in oil-rich Venezuela is super-cheap. But getting the parts to run it these days is an ordeal.

In Faneite's case, it meant four months without work for the 51-year-old father of four.

Rampant inflation has driven up the price of tires, batteries and carburetors.

"We couldn't get hold of a spare. We had to spend four months looking around," he told AFP. When he did find one, "it was super expensive."

The bus's owner leases the vehicle, a battered old blue 1987 model, to him and he earns a commission based on the number of passengers.

Luckily for Faneite, the owner paid the bill for the repair. Now Faneite is back at the wheel, anxiously wondering when the bus will break down again.

Dozens of buses and minibus-style public vehicles stand abandoned and rusting in wastelands.

"Fifty percent of the fleet is out of action across the whole country," or about 100,000 vehicles, said Erick Zuleta, president of the National Transport Federation.

"And the situation is getting worse."