Starting today and ending next Saturday, minibus operators engaged in public transport will pay a fee of $200 per day to use the city’s minibus parks.
The compromise was reached yesterday after the operators last week rejected an announcement by City Hall that an agreement was reached between the city administration and minibus operators for the operators to pay $100 for every trip they make. The operators had said this was too much for them.
City officials and the operators will meet again next week to analyse the results of the pilot and determine a way forward.
Town Clerk Royston King told a packed City Hall chamber of minibus operators yesterday that he believes that the only way to get a properly functioning system, is by stakeholders’ consultations and trial and error, which, according to him, is what the city council has done in this case.
“We should allow this one week as a pilot where we test the challenges and we know what changes have to be made. It is because we know there will be adjustments that we are meeting with the stakeholders and so forth,” King said though he made clear that “who don’t want to pay will not be allowed to use the park.”
City Hall last week deployed city constabulary ranks onto the streets for traffic management.
Beginning last Monday, the ranks have been directing traffic in the city with a special focus on commercial areas. City Hall says that with a batch of its own officers responsible for traffic law enforcement on the streets and bus parks of Georgetown, it will complement the Guyana Police Force’s (GPF) Traffic Department and there can be order in the public transport system.
King explained that two weeks ago, the city council met with Traffic Chief Dion Moore and examined the city constabulary partnering with the GPF. He said ranks from the city constabulary are now being trained by the GPF’s Traffic Department. “There is a partnership and we are working with the Guyana Police Force to ensure we regulate, control and manage traffic fully on council’s roads and in council’s areas. We will enforce the regulations, we will enforce the laws as far as practicable,” he declared.
“I think we have the force and the competencies to do it, that is why I suggested to the stakeholders here today (yesterday), to all, this particular period we are embarking on, as a pilot where we will test what we are doing and come back in another meeting to see, you know, the challenges, within this particular system,” he added.
However, the operators have little faith that the system will work and fear that they will once again return to a turn system riddled with allegations of law flouting and bullying.
“Yeah we going along with it but I like nearly everybody out here have to first see it to believe it…once you have the same traffic police and hotplating, same bradaps we coming back to, trust me,” minibus driver Hainford Clarke told Stabroek News shortly after yesterday’s meeting.
Bus operators from
various routes complained bitterly about infractions and unfairness at their parks and said that for their $200 daily fee, they expect some positive changes.
And while some bus operators said the system was a positive one that would see an end to the nuisance of touts, the touts were aggrieved saying that it was how they earned their daily wages.
“Like they want I go and thief. Getting rid ah we fuh we do wuh, you tell me. It’s a daily honest paper I making…I is wuk hard fuh duh $60 a load because I know at the end of the day I could nice mehself,” a tout who requested anonymity told Stabroek News.
Questioned on the man’s concerns, King said knowing the fact that touting is unlawful, the city council plans to use some of the monies made, to create jobs such as security personnel to man the parks, as well as cleaners, among others. He said that those persons can diversify to fit those employment needs.
‘Hot Plating and bullying’
Bus driver Kemraj Balmacoon, who works the Route 44 Georgetown to Enmore route, lamented that every day, in addition to being bullied, drivers are robbed of a fair turn by “hot-platers.” He said the situation has become so extreme that he is prevented from even parking his bus in the line at his park to drop off passengers. “You have some buses that think they own the park cause them working there longest so they call themselves ‘Park Bus.’ The park buses is shut we out from even pulling up in the park and there is hardly any police at the park,” he asserted.
Jeffrey Roberts of Route 40 Kitty/Campbellville echoed the sentiment adding that with “hot-plating” drivers on his route, those who want to comply with the rules are robbed of earnings. He related that the drivers of the “hotplate” buses do not have the patience to wait on a turn system and, as such, pull up in front of the line, have their passengers exit and fill passengers as they drive around the carpark.
“City Council will have a duty to ensure that `hot-plating’ don’t continue or else this system try as they want, cannot and will not work,” the driver who has over 10 years’ experience at the car park, said.
Meanwhile, drivers and even a few commuters of Route 31, Georgetown/ West Demerara, bemoaned what they said was a system that does not cater for the large number of travellers to new housing schemes such as Parfait Harmonie.
“When the line system was planned, it didn’t cater that we would have buses working the 31 route yes but not going to the places listed like Georgetown to Wales, Number 1 Canal and Number 2 Canal. We go specifically to Dairy inside Parfait Harmonie, we are the Dairy buses because you have to see it is a huge scheme and thousands upon thousands ah people travel there,” representative Sahid Mulla complained.
“There are three lines and they full slow but ours is the Number 1 line. It is unfair to us the passengers to have to wait for those buses to fill sometimes two hours behind them, when we done full up in 20 minutes,” an angry Maylene Daniels, a resident of Parfait Harmonie, told Stabroek News. She said she felt that it was her “obligation to de Parfait people” to come to the meeting and speak although it was a meeting for bus operators.
Mulla is pleading with City Hall to make provisions for the buses plying that route since he said when they use the sides of the Stabroek Market near to the Guyana Fire Service headquarters, they are ticketed.
“We need our own park, we have nowhere to go. We currently use the garbage section and we getting charge for that. Please I am asking them to look at this, please see the population of Parfait. The ‘Inside’ Diamond (the new Diamond Housing Scheme on the East Bank of Demerara) does the same thing on the 42 Route but they have space at that park,” Khalid Mohammed stated.
