URTU says its warning was ignored • The Government could
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have prevented potential job losses at RTITB and its wholly owned training subsidiary Centrex, claims the United Road Transport Union, if it had acted sooner on the union's warnings that the companies were in financial disarray.
However, URTU spokesman Doug Curtis, who raises the concerns that RHDTC could also soon be in administration, says a proposal for a meeting from parliamentary undersecretary Kim Howells came only a few days before the companies went into administration. A meeting between URTU and Howells is due to take place today (7 May). The Government will be urged to take over the remaining assets at RTITB and create a new public training body which will not be "at the mercy of a privatised company or the market".
The companies were formed in 1992out of the old Road Transport Industry Training Board, which had traditionally relied on government funding. "If RTITB goes, the whole road haulage training industry will go," says Curtis. "The Government should admit it had been told that there were problems."