What passes for traffic control is clearly deteriorating

Feb 12, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
The road carnage continues. And like so many others, I feel increasingly the member of an endangered species. What passes for traffic control is clearly deteriorating. My regular commuting route is interspersed with a set of non-functioning traffic lights, at a junction which provides for every type of vehicle, including large, long container types, to traverse at will, while hopefully, avoiding contact.
Travelling through the city it is possible to encounter in succession, non-functioning lights, blinking lights and then lights that actually function. The journey therefore requires serious concentration – but only from those of us who fear for our lives. Others proceed ignoring any signs, particularly those fading, faded or erased from the flat of the road – an outmoded and unlooked for signal to local strangers and overseas visitors, to what wishes to be regarded as a tourist friendly city.
It is as if the police in particular, and relevant stakeholders in general, are insensitive of the cost to the economy which is incurred by the loss of, and injury to, productive lives; young potential contributors to growth and development peremptorily snuffed out; the disorienting stress on family whose capabilities in turn are psychologically maimed; the undue pressures on the medical services, which can do only so much for the permanently disabled survivors.
Which brings us back to the basic issue of signage, about which I wrote the Editor of SN at the end of December, 2010.
Since then by letter of January 20, 2011, I brought my plea for more effective Road Safety signage direct to the Commissioner of Police, with copies to the following offices:
Hon. Clement Rohee, Minister of Home Affairs; Chairman, National Road Safety Council; President, Private Sector Commission; President, Guyana Manufacturing & Service Association; and President, Georgetown Chamber of Commerce & Industry
Not a single acknowledgement has been forthcoming. Not only is it difficult to accept that the Private Sector in particular is indifferent to the potential loss of customers, but also that it does not care about the risks to which its own transporters are exposed; not to mention the possible loss of, or damage to, goods and products.
It is difficult to accept that their silence represents their collective incapacities to take initiatives in this uncomplicated action of corporate social responsibility. It is even more difficult to accept that the media as a whole is content to report the mayhem, and exhibit photographs of death and destruction, and not itself feel sufficiently moved to mount a campaign to activate a more comprehensive and commonsensical effort to reduce the road carnage from its current optimal to a minimal level.
E. B. John

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