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Pretty Arithmetic. Poor Policy.
Dear Editor,
I have seen the circulating post suggesting that instead of giving 203,000 students a $20,000 transportation grant, roughly $4 billion annually, we should buy buses and boats and run a National School Transportation System.
On paper, that sounds efficient. In reality, it’s incomplete.
Let’s deal with what’s missing.
Buying buses is the easy part. Operating a national fleet is an entirely different enterprise. You don’t just purchase vehicles; you create a permanent state-run transport company inside a Ministry. That means:
- A full administrative unit
- Drivers, relief drivers, supervisors, dispatchers
- A mechanical division with certified technicians
- Parts procurement systems
- Fuel contracts
- Insurance, licensing, inspections
- Depots, security, and storage facilities
And that’s before the first child steps onto a bus.
Heavy-duty buses and boats require constant maintenance. Tyres alone for large buses are costly. Engines, transmissions, cooling systems, none of these run on optimism. (I know a thing or two about motor vehicles) If maintenance slips even slightly, downtime increases. Once downtime increases, reliability drops. When reliability drops, parents are stranded. Now add labour realities. Public operations depend on people showing up every single day. Sick leave. Vacation leave. Industrial action. Absenteeism. Overtime claims. Pension liabilities. These are structural costs, not one-off purchases.
Then comes the economic ripple effect.
The majority of minibus operators depend heavily on schoolchildren for steady daily income. If the State absorbs that passenger base, what happens?
You risk industrial action from the minibus associations.
You squeeze private operators out of their most stable revenue stream. You send a signal to the wider private sector that the State is prepared to enter and dominate service markets.
That has consequences.
Entrepreneurs think twice when government becomes competitor instead of regulator and partner. Investment climate confidence matters, especially in a growing economy like ours. And let’s talk basic economics. If private operators lose volume, they will increase fares on remaining routes to survive. Reduced passenger base plus fixed operating costs equals higher prices. That’s not politics, that’s microeconomics.
We’ve seen versions of this before. The Five Bs initiative under the previous administration introduced buses with good intentions. But without a deeply structured institutional framework for maintenance, scheduling, accountability and long-term financing, consistency became the challenge. Vehicles alone do not equal systems.
Now contrast that with the current approach.
The $4+ billion is not disappearing into bureaucracy. It is flowing directly into households and circulating immediately within the economy. It strengthens families’ purchasing power while simultaneously sustaining the existing private transport ecosystem, a sector that supports thousands of operators daily.
That’s not accidental. That’s calibrated.
Is $20,000 going to cover every transportation expense? Of course not. But public policy is about targeted support, not total substitution of private responsibility. The grant cushions families while preserving market stability and avoiding the creation of a massive recurrent expenditure line that will expand every single year. The $$ saved goes towards their home mortgage or reinvestment or savings or comfort.
Smart governance isn’t just about doing something big. It’s about doing something sustainable.
Sometimes the flashy proposal wins applause.
But steady, fiscally responsible support keeps the system functioning.
Anyway… back to Time Attack Preps for Guyana Motor Racing and Sports Club tomorrow.
Sincerely
Dr. Josh Kanhai
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