It was the Guyana Police Force, through the issuance of a press release on Tuesday that made it known that a 52-year-old man, Basdeo Mangra of North Vryheid’s Lust, East Coast Demerara, had died following an altercation with a minibus conductor over loud music being played in the vehicle.
Mrs Anita Mangra, his wife, revealed that her husband had complained about the music after the driver was unable to hear a passenger’s request for a stop because of the high decibel level and instead deposited the person four corners past where the stop was requested. (Incidentally, the fact that he could only stop four corners away also speaks to the speed at which the driver must have been travelling.) Mrs Mangra said that after the conductor used foul language when her husband asked that the music be turned down, a row ensued. When the man threatened her husband with an ice-pick and she urged the driver to do something, he stopped the bus and dumped her and her husband off in the vicinity of Kitty.
It was some time later, after they were on another bus, Mrs Mangra said, that her husband complained of feeling unwell. He apparently died en route to the hospital.
Mr Mangra may or may not have been seriously injured during the very physical altercation in which a weapon was brandished by the conductor. Mr Mangra might have had a pre-existing condition, which could have been exacerbated by the loud music, his anger, the stress of fighting or all of the above. The results of a post-mortem examination, yet to be conducted, will no doubt reveal all.
What is pellucid from this incident, even to the blindest among us is that several laws were broken. The first, the blaring of music in the minibus, is committed so many times over and with such impunity that those in the wrong now consider themselves right.
During Ms Gail Teixeira’s tenure as minister of home affairs between 2004 and 2006, she had famously commented during a speech at a National Road Safety Council event that it seemed the battle had been lost with regard to approaching the issue of amplified music as a noise nuisance. Instead, she had said, the Police Traffic Department would address it as a road safety hazard, given that excessively loud music caused distraction and could impede drivers’ concentration and hearing.
It was not until 2008 that the laws were finally amended to prohibit the playing of music in minibuses and hire cars plying routes for public transportation. And it would appear that the police view enforcement as a lost cause, particularly when it comes to minibuses, some of which incidentally are owned by police officers and their families.
Sporadically, there is a series of ‘campaigns’ against amplified music in minibuses. Police would stop a few minibuses; impound a few others; demand that some remove their boom boxes and umpteen speakers, tweeters and the like. After a few mornings, the drivers/owners would replace the equipment and the cycle would start all over again.
Commuters who dare to speak against the loud and in many instances lewd music, tend to get an earful from the drivers and conductors as well as other members of the travelling public, who obviously don’t mind the assault on their eardrums and senses.
Unfortunately, people like Mr Mangra, who would speak up at the risk of being ostracised, or assaulted, or worse, and those who actually enjoy the atrocity being inflicted on the travelling public in the name of music are in the minority. The majority comprises those whose apathy has numbed their senses and those unwilling to stand up because they don’t want to stand out; they are willing to pay for, but not demand a better service. They enter these death traps every day with their bodies clenched in fear. They endure the speeding, blaring music, uncouth behaviours and being packed like sardines, perhaps not caring that their hesitancy about saying something emboldens the lawless. Yes, the police have their role and we must demand that they enforce the law, but those of us who want a just society for ourselves and posterity must do more than observe.
