Something is Drastically Wrong On The Route 45 Bus Park

Sep 11, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – Grateful if you published the following in your letters columns. Thank you. I recently started driving a bus on Route 45 after regular work hours to earn some extra money to  support my family.  A major challenge with the Route 45 Park is that sections of it are completely  taken over and overrun by vendors, North of Demico, with some vendors and customers parking  their vehicles directly where the Route 45 buses go to pick up passengers in front of Stabroek  Market itself, completely blocking up the entrance to the 45 Bus Park and forcing the Route 45  buses to block the carriageway around that area as they are now forced to join the line on the road  itself, versus where the vendors and their customers’ cars blocked up the Route 45 entrance.

This  apparently happens in the afternoons/evenings.  While I understand that vendors are hustling to  make a living also, they cannot agree to blocking up the public transport system on what is probably the most congested area in Guyana.  They are encouraged to see with Bus drivers and passengers  trying to get where they are going every day.  They simply cannot, and it is unacceptable to occupy  and become a public nuisance on the Route 45 Bus Park, or for that matter any other Bus Park.

Please use discretion and consideration of others and the public interest when choosing a spot to  sell.  The basic rule is if you are offending someone where you sell, you shouldn’t be there. Ask the  Town Clerk of Mayor and City Council for advice.   While I am familiar with the touts on this Route, I was taken aback by one who was brazen enough  to give me a well articulated script on his opinion of the ‘system’ on the Route 45 Park, even  detailing that on Mondays through Fridays touts have to be paid $120 or above for every bus loaded (up from $100), and $200 on Saturdays (The Police advised that touts have no right or authority to  be paid, so to pay them is to encourage racketeering in its most basic form.  Touts are a notorious  public nuisance whose existence continues to extract tremendous taxes on both drivers and  passengers on a daily basis.)  As if this was not enough, he went on to explain that only certain  buses could work “after-hours” (whatever that time happened to be) and that I could not.  This is a  ‘tout,’ someone of no good repute, telling a driver, hustling to balance his family budget, of a bus owned by someone who invested millions into putting it on the road to earn money for his family  also, that he, an unregulated nobody, was not allowing me to drive in accordance with the laws of  Guyana to earn an income, and further that he ‘laid out the rules’ for me, that he ‘runs things,’ and  that he was denying the owner of the bus also, an income from his investment.

Later Saturday  evening around 8 0’clock while I was in the line in the park, he appeared at the driver side of my  bus and reiterated that he meant what he said, that I couldn’t pick up passengers on the park.  Some other bus drivers and some car drivers working with him arranged their vehicles so that I was ultimately forced out of the line.  This particular tout is someone police would do well to have a conversation with since in addition to his apparent assertion of an organized racket on the Route 45 Bus Park, he also intimated a few days earlier in a public dialogue on the park that he liked boys.

The Police and Child Welfare should be interested to find out who those boys are and what he was

having them do to satisfy is sexual appetite. Following on the heels of my run-in with that tout Saturday night, I was greeted by a group of Route 45 bus drivers who were apparently in league with the tout, who together orchestrated their buses to keep me from loading passengers.  One particular bus driver Bkk 4233 was apparently coordinating  the other bus drivers, apparently had no regard for the Police, even after I returned to tell them that I had reported the matter to the traffic Department at Brickdam, that I preferred not create problems with the police for them to take away from them earning an income.  He told me that I would have to get off the Route 45 Zone, and continued to direct the other bus drivers to block me from picking up passengers.

I would here encourage the Police get deeper down into the racket orchestrated by this driver, and identify and investigate all the touts harassing both bus drivers and passengers on the Route 45 Bus Park.

Regards,

Craig Sylvester

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• Craig Sylvester, Letters, Route 45 Bus Park

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