Dear Editor,
It is 4.30 am and the bus travelling from Lethem to Georgetown has reached its first police checkpoint. Almost all of the passengers are fast asleep. Some are young, some are old, some are mothers nursing their babies.
Suddenly there are orders from someone in the dark with a flashlight for “all passengers please come out of the bus and go and check in your name”. It is the voice of a police officer. So sleepily and grumpily the passengers undertake the arduous task of disembarking. The baby starts wailing after being so rudely awakened. The sickly elderly gentleman slowly and painfully extricates himself from the bus.
The passengers disembark from the bus and head into pitch blackness with very light rain. Most are resigned to this treatment since it is a part of the travels along the GT-Lethem road. Few mutter complaints under their breath about why this has to be happening when it would be much easier for the police officer to peer into the bus and verify the passengers with the manifest which is given to the officers by the bus driver. But no one dares to protest aloud because it may incur the wrath of the police officer who may then delay the bus and even demand to search it thoroughly so as to punish those who dare protest his rules in his kingdom.
The passengers are forced to climb the wet slippery steps in total darkness, depending on touch more than vision to get themselves to the verandah. There another police officer sits under the light of his cellphone trying to read his manifest. “Name,” he shouts, and the passenger at the front of the queue gives his name. “Next,” he shouts, as the first passenger starts his trek back to the bus and fits himself back inside. This continues until all the passengers are accounted for.
That is all he needs ‒ our names!
Finally, all are back in the bus. The baby has stopped wailing and the elderly gentleman has made it back into his seat. Fortunately there were no incidents. No snake was slithering in the dark to attack any unsuspecting passenger. The elderly gentleman did not fall on the slippery stairs.
Contented, the passengers return to sleep mode and the bus continues on its way.
One-and-a-half hours later and the bus is at the second checkpoint. Once again the sleepy, grumbling passengers have to disembark to go through the same procedure of having their named checked against the driver’s manifest.
Two hours later, at a third police checkpoint, the same process has to be gone through all over again. By this time the baby is hungry and resumes wailing. The elderly gentleman seems worn out from driving through the previous night. Yet they all wearily have to go through the entire process again while the fresh policeman sits at his desk like the teacher awaiting his students.
All of this simply to verify one’s name.
This has been the mode of operation since commuters started using the GT-Lethem road.
A quick question to the authorities: Don’t they think that this process is too bureaucratic and inconvenient for the passengers? Because all of the passengers think it is!
Certainly there is an easier way. How about having the policemen come to the bus and do whatever inspections they need to do? After all, isn’t that part of their job? Why the need to inconvenience the masses when one individual can come and do the same work?
We are said to be in a new age of dispensation and efficiency. Please do not take us for granted and treat us like we’re inconsequential simply because we are coming from the hinterland.
Hopefully someone in authority will read this letter and introduce much needed change in the system at checkpoints in our hinterland.
Yours faithfully,
M Abraham
