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Our transport system reeks of indiscipline and hostility

Feb 16, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
I refer to a recent article in the print media where a Magistrate fined a taxi driver for being abusive to a passenger. Bravo, Your Worship!
The public transport system in Guyana produces the most notorious display of poor customer service. Our public transport system currently showcases to insiders and outsiders a prevailing and seemingly permissible attitude in Guyana.
Except for a few instances (airport taxis, hotel taxis) our public transport system reeks of indiscipline, hostility, threat to public safety and a host of negative outpourings. Constant reviews, road fatalities, traffic matters before the courts and our own daily experiences underscore this reality. Our roadways are perhaps the single largest melting pot for our population on an everyday basis. Consequently, it is the bedrock on which a significant percentage of our people’s attitudes are based.
Whether we drive or walk or ride or are passengers, or babes-in-arms, whatever our ages or calling, we are exposed “out there” to daily and ever increasing doses of traffic-law transgressions. It is not accidental, therefore, that many countries enforce their traffic laws with stringency, since our behaviour on the roads is reflective of our behaviour at home and elsewhere and vice versa.
In Guyana, the behaviour of our school children, many vehicle drivers, (many bought their drivers’ licences) even our law enforcement officers, all display total disregard for our traffic laws, which translates into disregard for our laws in general. Sadly, the National Psyche is largely influenced/ fashioned by what transpires on our highways.
We must start somewhere to restore sanity to this society. I suggest that our public transport system is as good a place as any. This industry is perhaps the largest service industry where service providers and paying customers interface. And service industries demand certain normative behaviours. We cannot see it otherwise.
Unfortunately, it is also the service industry most notorious for crass customer service. Thus, that there must be certain a level of customer service consciousness, including quality of service, on the part of the service providers goes without saying.
It cannot be acceptable that because drivers, etc. are “hustling” for a living, they can do so by breaking the law and by treating the travelling public any old how.
In view of the foregoing, therefore, it seems very necessary that the public transport system needs urgent revamping and that regulations must be put in place or, if already in place, be purposefully enforced.
The following are some suggestions:
* Dress code, including physical tidiness (unkempt beard, etc.)
* General conduct
* Be subject to twice yearly medical examinations
* Withdrawal of driver’s licence if convicted for X number of traffic offences – i.e. a demerit points system
* Buses, hire cars can only have Y noise making capacity
* Governors to be placed on the accelerators of buses/hire cars
* The use of private cars for the purpose of taxi service should be discouraged
* Jaywalkers should be prosecuted with greater vigour
* Enforcement by the police is crucial, despite recognition that many police officers have direct or indirect ownership of buses and hire/private hire cars.
The foregoing is not exhaustive. Resistance to implementation is expected. But the general good must take precedence over sectoral preferences and indulgences, particularly if these result in wanton disregard for the welfare of society at large. We have had resistance to the removal of people on the Lamaha embankment. But it was done.
Finally, the writer feels convinced that with the introduction and/or enforcement of certain traffic regulations, an attitudinal change for the better will be evident in our society within 12 months.
T. Jadunauth

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