Minibus Noise

May 03, 2013 Editorial

All of Guyana knew that it was only a matter of time before the madness that exists in Guyana over the blaring of “music” from minibuses would end in the death of someone. Last Monday, Basdeo Mangra and his wife boarded a Route 44 minibus to Georgetown. On their way to his brother-in-law’s wake and his wife upset with the cacophony, the man asked that the music be turned down, after another passenger’s request to disembark could not be heard by the driver.
This simple request enraged the conductor who berated the hapless Mangra and a scuffle ensued in which the conductor pulled an ice pick. When the wife appealed to the driver, she and her husband were unceremoniously dumped at Kitty, a mile away from their Stabroek Bus Park destination. Two buses later, Mr Mangra collapsed, was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.
We have spent some time on the incident because it illustrates quite graphically the lawlessness that obtains in a regulated sector – transportation. It is literally one in which John and Jane Public are tossed into a Kafkaesque world, marked by a nightmarishly senseless, disorienting, often menacing quality controlled by the bus conductors and their drivers.
This world, was created after minibuses were permitted to take over the public transportation routes back in the 1990s. But the mind-bending noise that invades into the deepest recesses of the captive traveller is only one aspect of what is now known as “the minibus culture”. The word “culture” acknowledges the pervasiveness and all-encompassing world that one enters into when one steps into most minibuses in Guyana.
It begins with the touts who harass, pull and tug at passengers at the bus parks to fill their quotas for a fee. It continues with the routine overloading and flouting of the laws that govern the bus parks. The dalliances between bus drivers, conductors and schoolgirls represent a dominant sub-theme in the minibus culture. The loud music which is dominated presently by dancehall and dub is partly dictated to please and attract this demographic.
But all of this did not appear overnight. It grew in front of an agitated majority of the public that complained bitterly in every available avenue, especially in the letter pages of the newspapers. Finally, on 7th August 2008, the National Assembly added a new section 174B, to the relevant law. Very clearly it states, “A driver of a motor bus [minibus] or hire car shall not play or allow anyone to play any music in the motor bus [minibus] or hire car whilst the motor bus [minibus] or hire car is plying its route or parked in a public place.
“A driver of a motor bus [minibus] or hire car who contravenes subsection (1) commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than seven thousand five hundred dollars nor more than fifteen thousand dollars and to imprisonment for six months and on a second or subsequent conviction to a fine of not less than ten thousand dollars nor more than twenty thousand dollars and to imprisonment for twelve months.”
As the Ministry of Home Affairs pointed out last year, “Section 174B is not limited to the playing of loud, continuous and repetitive music which disturbs occupants of a minibus or impairs the driver’s ability to use the road cautiously. Rather, the section clearly criminalises the playing of any music in a motor bus while plying its route or parked in a public place. Therefore, there should not be present in any minibus any electronic equipment (including televisions, radios, tape-decks, compact disc (CD) players, digital video disc (DVD) players, amplifiers, equalisers, speakers) which would facilitate the playing of music.”
We therefore would like the Minister of Home Affairs to explain to the public why, after the police desultorily run some “campaigns”, matters always revert to the present lawless status quo, where passengers can be killed.

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