It was only after the minibus had made its third unexpected stop en route to Georgetown from the East Coast that one of its long-suffering passengers essayed a protest. It was a barely audible grumble rather than any serious gesture of outrage but it reached the driver’s ear anyway. The stops – the first at an East Coast police station, the second to secure food from a take-away snackette and the final one to ‘fill up’ at the Kitty Guyoil station – had been considerably overdone and it was apparent that the minibus crew had come to expect that eventually there would be some form of passenger protest.
They had been prosecuting their indiscretion with an infuriating brazenness, stopping at intervals without once bothering to provide their passengers with at least a polite advance notice of an intention to stop.
The man who had dared to proffer the mildest possible protest in response to the petrol-station stop was given short shrift. After he had received a fine dressing down from the driver of the minibus, the conductor, who, by now, had finished overseeing the ‘filling up’ process, chimed in, curtly recommending to the hapless passenger that he find some other quicker means of getting to wherever it was that he was going.
None of the other passengers troubled themselves to intervene and the abused commuter thought it best to bring his protestation to an abrupt end. There was a sense that the minibus crew was ready for a confrontation and no one seemed inclined to take them on. What had transpired was a truly shocking display of bad manners, bullyism, and unmindfulness of consumer rights – a graphic illustration of the worst of what is commonly termed the minibus culture.
Minibuses qualify as public transportation in so far as they are the most popular, preferred and cheapest means of transport in coastal Guyana. That is as far as it goes. In far too many cases there is an absence of the protocols and practices associated with public service. Peak period overloading creates what, frequently, are conditions of unbearable discomfort; the preoccupation with taking advantage of the rush hour manifests itself in ‘doubling’ and ‘tripling up’ and demonstrations of reckless driving that frightens passengers, endangers lives and all too frequently ends in tragedy.
Here, the Police Traffic Department has to carry much of the blame. The simple truth is that they have failed to provide a sufficiently strong deterrent to check the excesses of the minibus culture. Unrelenting reckless driving and loud music in minibuses are manifestations of some of the most significant failings of the Police Traffic Department. There is a widespread perception that the problem is rooted in the institutionalization of bribes and kickbacks.
What was striking about the aforementioned episode involving the minibus crew and the commuter was the complete lack of even a modicum of the service culture that ought correctly to inform the behaviour of those who provide the service. Instances of uncouthness and sometimes open and violent abusiveness grow more prevalent. Commuters, meanwhile, appear to be assuming an increasingly defensive posture, as though the service that has become one of the largest single employers of labour in the country is a favour to those who use the buses.
Nor do the police these days appear to be sufficiently alert to what appears to be the frequency with which some long-haul buses operate without conductors, leaving unwilling and sometimes barely able commuters to ‘pull doors’ and creating undue delays in circumstances where the driver must double as conductor. These ad hoc arrangements all contribute to the inefficiency of the service and redounds to the inconvenience and discomfort of commuters.
It is by no means accidental that fewer commuters bother to publicly protest their ordeal these days. There are some areas of public service in Guyana where you endure what are sometimes the most unbearable indiscretions without murmur, acutely aware of the fact that your protestations will change little if anything.
