At the meeting of the Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC) on February 5, Communist councillor Eugen Balica made an interpellation demanding that the Chisinau residents are provided with public transport in the evening. Balica said that the people working in the second shift cannot use the public transport after 23.00 to go home as there are not units of transport and the authorities should not tolerate such a situation. He also said that the lack of resources given as reason by the Electric Transport Division and the Urban Bus Company cannot be accepted. The councillor asked CMC to oblige these companies to draft a decision regarding the introduction of nocturnal routes between 23.00 and 24.00. “The travellers must have the same transport options in the morning and in the evening,” Eugen Balica said. The cited source said that the private transport works in the evening, while the public one does not and this is not fair. Recently, the number of minibuses that transport passengers along routes in Chisinau has been reduced by 500 units to 1,100 units. The local public administration is concerned that the public transport would not run smoothly following the withdrawal of the minibuses. The local budget is austere and does not include resources for buying trolleybuses and buses this year. The last units of transport were purchased in 2005 and 2006. Ten Ukrainian trolleybuses and 20 German buses worth 100 million lei overall were acquired during that period. Some of the old trolleybuses were equipped with new coachworks – method considered to be less costly than the purchase of new units. Earlier, the municipal transporters estimated that they would need about 230 new units of transport to ensure a functional public transport in Chisinau - 350 trolleybuses and 250 buses. A number of 270 trolleybuses and 108 buses work along routes in the municipality of Chisinau at present, but this is not enough to cope with the demand.