NATIONALISED ScotRail has confirmed the Dutch state transport firm Abellio which formerly ran the franchise is cashing in on continued contracts to support crippled train services.
The Scottish Government announced last year that ScotRail would come under direct state control from April 1, after stripping Abellio of control three years early in the wake of continuing outcry over service failings and rising costs to the taxpayer.
The Scottish Government runs the services through an arms-length company after declaring the franchising system "no longer fit for purpose".
But in the past two months Scotland's Railway has descended into chaos with thousands of service cancellations on top of emergency cuts to weekday timetables by a third.
An average of 120 a day were cancelled during the previous 15 days of rail chaos with problems blamed on an industrial dispute over pay which has seen some drivers refuse to work on rest days and Sundays - a practice crucial to keeping Scotland's trains running.
ScotRail has admitted that Abellio still has undisclosed contracts to support services post-nationalisation through deals that will run for up to three years and estimated to be worth millions.
A contract to run a customer service phone line and provide payroll services is expected to run until 2025.
And further deals for replacement bus and taxi services, as well as buses between Glasgow Central, Queen Street and Buchanan Street Bus Station are due to last till 2023.
The contracts also involve the management of station tenancies.
A ScotRail spokesman said: “The services provided by Abellio support key services for the continued operation of ScotRail, including rail replacement during times of disruption and engineering work, station tenancy and advertising, as well as customer service correspondence support and payroll services.”
Publicly funded ScotRail have refused to divulge the salaries of chief executive Chris Gibb and chief operating officer Joanne Maguire.
ScotRail disrupted around 80 further services after already cutting 50 per cent of its trains in an emergency Sunday timetable that has been described as a “hammer blow” to Scotland’s tourism and hospitality sectors.
Just 556 out of its normal 1,088 services are expected to run after drivers rejected a 4.2 per cent pay rise in the latest round of talks with the newly nationalised rail operator.
By comparison, 768 services ran across the country last Sunday.
Abellio was stripped of the ScotRail franchise after a disastrous 2018 winter timetable and the introduction of high-speed trains. New class 385 electric trains ushered in months of cancellations and disruption to services with much of it put down to staff shortages partly due to training to deal with the new trains and timetable.
Nicola Sturgeon launched nationalised ScotRail at Glasgow Queen Street Station on April and said bringing ScotRail into public ownership was a "historic and momentous occasion".
"This new beginning creates a real opportunity to deliver a railway which is for the nation, and fully focused on being run for the benefit of its users - customers, staff and stakeholders, as opposed to shareholders," she said.
Prior to the impact of Covid-19, the ScotRail franchise operated around 2,400 train services each day, delivering around 93m passenger journeys per year.
The rail industry in Scotland is hugely important to the wider economy contributing around £700m in Gross Value Added (GVA) economic output per year and employs around 13,000 people - 9000 directly. Of the 9000, half areemployed by ScotRail - and 4,000 on the wider supply chain.
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