Dear Editor,
The Traffic Chief should not allow himself to be drawn into the ‘Blame Game’ deception so often activated by either emotional letter writers or used as a façade by those in authority to conceal their own incompetence. I make reference to `Traffic Chief blames `almost suicidal’ commuters for road carnage’
Kaieteur News, Nov. 07.
In the context of our overwhelming national retrogressions, I often ponder and agree with my friend Freddie Kissoon on the practical purpose of all the Opposition Parties in Parliament, how do their presence there serve us?, now to the question at hand.
While a pioneer at Kuru Kuru in 1974, I was part of a small group that conducted a trek through a trail that led us to the conservancy area at Cane Grove, Mahaica. We were told by the trek leader that there were plans to construct a highway cutting before the Mahaica bridge to connect to the Linden Highway so as to avoid Berbice traffic from taking the long way around the East Coast up the East Bank. This highway was also to be connected by roadways at the back of coastal villages as an exit in case of problems with the sea.
None of this happened. I was not at the College compound from late ‘74’ , I was later told that those plans folded up after the country was bankrupted following the pressures brought upon it because of our Cold War stance, that collapsed the Hydro project and with it a sizeable national investment. The roads we now have were there when we had a few vehicles in our villages, most were vans to transport livestock and cars were strictly classified ‘hire cars’. In the city cars were also scarcely owned and when owned they belonged to top public service officials, lawyers, doctors etc.
How many of us can remember relatives who had sport cars, and how many relatives? Times have changed, no argument or quarrel with that.
Most nations monitor the import or manufacture of vehicles against the construction of meaningful roadways, with our geographical gifts of wide land spaces this should not be a problem, however, we are a poor country my relatives in the states have traded in their 4×4’s for less fuel consumption vehicles.
Well, though we’re not an oil producing country with our little ‘Colonial Roads’ many of those traded-in vehicles are here in G/T, in our massive congestion.
Our road casualties are not going to go away. We just have too many vehicles with too little roads and as far as I know no practical road development plan exists, I will invite the Traffic Chief to use between light to Bourda Sts as a microcosmic case study of our wider traffic problems, it’s a good thing we don’t have the school road safety patrols anymore, because in many areas we’ve lost all the parapets.
The problem lies with an inadequate intelligence pool, bound by a sincere national commitment with those who are in political/ authority; who, as evidence demonstrates in the majority, cannot embrace any form of public development unless it has personal kickbacks.
Yours faithfully,
Barrington Braithwaite
