Dear Editor,
I read with interest and encouragement an initiative taken by the Minister of Home Affairs to set up a broad-based committee to monitor the public transportation system on the East Coast Demerara and to make recommendations regarding improving the system. The current chaotic environment, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is a creature of three main players: the drivers, the commuters and the law enforcers.
That the image and efficacy of our public transportation system needs an aggressive overhaul goes without saying; the first step has been taken.
Listening to GRA’s five minute programme hosted on radio by Ms Magaret Lawrence, I was alarmed to learn that 11,000 motor vehicles on Guyana’s roads have not been licensed for 2011. Is this for real? And the GRA personnel sounded very nonchalant about the action the GRA is contemplating to remedy this situation.
Away from a minimum revenue loss to GRA of $22M, the owners of 11,000 vehicles are making no contribution to the construction/maintenance of the roadways they traverse. They are free-riders on other taxpayers’ backs.
Equally delinquent, or perhaps more, is the GRA itself. Getting the plate numbers of these vehicles into the public domain should be no serious challenge, notwithstanding the fact that the GRA does not enjoy a reputation for efficient record-keeping. But, like so many other agencies, the public’s help in providing useful information towards remedying several societal ills is almost always spurned. Why can’t the GRA publish, in batches, the plate number and other basic particulars of these vehicles and encourage the public to help to surface these vehicles?
There are also other implications to having 11,000 vehicles unlicensed: insurance, commission of crimes, etc.
Please GRA. Start somewhere!
Yours faithfully,
T Jadunauth
