This ‘Bloody’ Nonsense Must Stop

Nov 07, 2010 News

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Urges Michael Benjamin

A priest and a minibus driver both died and stood before the Pearly Gates awaiting their fate. The good Lord turned to the minibus driver and said, “Enter my faithful servant, I am pleased with you!” He then looked at the priest and condemned him to eternal damnation in hell. Puzzled, the priest decided to argue his case, quite certain there was a terrible mix up.
“Lord,” he said, “For all of my life I have walked the straight and narrow path; I have saved many a hapless soul, baptized hundreds and won them into your kingdom; I have done everything considered holy and just while all that minibus driver did was to recklessly ply his trade leaving destruction and mayhem in his wake and now is this my lot to bear? There must have been a terrible error of judgment.
The Lord looked at the priest, shook his head and replied, “I have examined your petition but you don’t seem to understand it; while you preached, your congregation slept but when that man drove, everybody prayed.”
Indeed, most people can identify with such reactions as some drivers recklessly traverse the highways and byways as if they are on the South Dakota circuit, quite oblivious to the dangers to life and limb of other road users.
The police have not released the comparative statistics but an observational analysis would uncover that minibuses have been involved in a high percentage of accidents in comparison to other modes of public transportation. Most times these buses are transformed into death machines as many drivers, devoid of the prerequisite experience and skill, race along the streets, totally oblivious to the misery and sorrow their irresponsible actions leave in its wake.
These buses represent the core of public transportation and are of immense value to the working class by dint of the fare structure in comparison to other modes of transportation.
Minibuses became the common mode of public transportation just after the TATA buses, which were subsidized by the government, were scrapped about two or more decades ago.
These buses (big yellow buses and the TATA) served as the core of public transportation and those with institutional memory will remember the services they provided. The terminal was situated just outside the Stabroek Market, on the square well known as Jurassic Park.
Those buses plied routes that catered for commuters in every nook and cranny of Georgetown and its environs. These vehicles accommodated about fifty-odd seated patrons while a specified number was allowed to stand.
Back in those days, patrons congregated at designated bus stops and bus drivers were not allowed to entertain ingress and egress of the vehicles unless the passengers were at the designated stops. Choices were many and the traveler was allowed to relax in comfort right up to the end of his/her journey.
Citizens in their late thirties and early forties would remember with nostalgia the variety of choices; from the Lodge Church north to Campbellville, Regent and Kitty Avenue (now Mandela Avenue), round the world; the choices were varied. Unfortunately, this mode of transportation is now a thing of the past, replaced by the infamous minibuses.
When the minibuses replaced the yellow and TATA buses as the core mode of public transportation, the zoning arrangement was non-existent. Drivers were free to choose their route for the day. The situation became complicated when drivers arbitrarily switched zones based on the quantity of the clientele.
For example, a driver plying the Kitty route would look over to the South bus park; observe a crowd and simply abandon his zone in preference of the more lucrative route. This indiscretion caused many a passenger to be left stranded at their terminals and the authorities stepped in.
Bus owners were instructed to register their vehicles in specified zones and they were not permitted to abandon that route unless they received special written permission from the police.
Since Government had ceased to subsidize the transportation industry, it also relinquished its stranglehold on the fare structure and many other regulatory factors, necessary for the smooth and efficient functioning of the sector.
When one examines the current situation, it may also be fair to say that the safety of the commuting public was severely compromised when the government removed the subsidy, scrapped the big buses and allowed the private sector to take over the transportation industry.
The minibus owners had to foot the bill for spare parts and other factors that kept the buses in working order, not to mention the fluctuating prices of gasoline. They began to feel the bite of the astronomical costs of maintenance.
Often, these drivers would arbitrarily jack up the fare claiming rising maintenance and other costs. Such decisions forced the police, in tandem with legislators, to enact stringent measures aimed at protecting the powerless consumers, frequently held to ransom by fluctuating prices they could have ill afforded.
Many grumbled and fretted but paid the increase because they were destined for far flung rural communities and could not possibly walk.
The influx in the transportation industry where almost anyone that could raise a small installment as down payment on a minibus and work the vehicle to offset the balance of the payment resulted in a new culture where citizens were pushed, shoved and eventually browbeaten into buses they would not have initially ventured to travel.
While the buses provided much needed work for the unskilled such as conductors, and while many out of work drivers were given a new lease to ‘carry home the bacon,’ there arose a plethora of unpalatable issues.
The owners simply bought the buses, employed a driver and a conductor and demanded a fixed fee at the end of the working day. The drivers and conductors, hard pressed to meet the sometimes unrealistic figures, devised various means to earn a take home pay that was on par with their labour.
It will not take an analyst to deduce that the pressures that the bus would have to endure to meet the unrealistic targets would create constant mechanical problems as the drivers hack these vehicles and in many cases, double up in order to meet the designated target while pocketing a large share of the daily profits.
This phenomenon has created a host of unpalatable vices including overloading and speeding in order to maximize profits. While the legislators and the police have been on top of their game, enacting stringent laws meant to curb these new ills, the minibus operators have devised counteracting ploys to avert the system.
There have been reported cases of officers accepting bribes to turn a blind eye to those drivers who blatantly violate the Road Act. There have also been reports that many law officers have one or more buses on the road and are markedly oblivious as the drivers in their employ careen along the streets, double up and contravene the laws with total impunity.
The situation has now developed into uncontrollable proportions and the citizenry is paying for these administrative faux pas with their lives.  There is always a price to pay and the price for such ineptitude is the grotesque and mangled bodies that splatter our roadways.
I have traveled extensively and must admit that Guyana has the most disorganized and haphazard transportation service that I have experienced.
In England, for example, one can hop off from Heathrow or Gatwick Airport and board the subway with a ticket that costs three pounds and fifty pence. That ticket is valid for the rest of that day for any journey around the London area and its environs at no extra cost.
A slightly different but consumer friendly system obtains in Canada. Purchasing a subway ticket guarantees the consumer optimum service, even to the point of boarding a bus to facilitate his/her forward journey after disembarking the train. There are so many other subsidized initiatives; if per chance the consumer boarded a bus and wished to stop short, let’s say to visit a friend, that person receives a transfer, valid for an additional hour to resume their journey.
Of course such consumer relation ploys are only possible through an organized and subsidized transportation industry. In the absence of such systems naturally, the government and the police would be hard pressed to curb the high incidences of road violations especially speeding— the chief cause of accidents. Then there are the loud, boisterous and lewd lyrics that pass for music that assault the commuters’ ears.
Some enter the buses tired after a hard day’s work and disembark in surly moods, the lyrics of the lewd song pounding in their heads.
The headlines in the Kaieteur News a few Saturdays ago where a dozen commuters lost their lives, coupled with the horrific and graphic depictions of mangled bodies and broken families, are more than enough to curdle the blood, yet these images are not forcing errant drivers to slow down nor exercise care and caution.
Almost on a daily basis passengers in minibuses are rendered lifeless or incapacitated after serious accidents; most of them caused by excessive speeding and inexperienced drivers that should not even be allowed to steer a donkey cart. Even the uninitiated would experience eye aches at the sordid scenes after an accident which once again raise the vexed question, “When will this bloody nonsense end?”
The Police and legislators must go back to the drawing board and implement strategies and systems to curb the lawless practices on our roads. The time has long passed for a sustained campaign to rid the streets of those killers behind wheels.
It now seems pretty obvious that unless the authorities come up with a solution to what I wish to refer to as ‘the minibus travesty,’ the projected population figure will remain a pipe dream, especially when minibus drivers believe that their lot is in heaven.

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