Demerara Harbour Bridge (DHB) tolls for private cars and taxis will jump from $100 to $200, among other increases, it was revealed in parliament yesterday, prompting the opposition PPP/C to call for their rescission.
Minister in the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, Annette Ferguson said that one axel trailers will now pay $300, up from $200 while motor lorries will pay $700, a $200 dollar increase from the old toll. Hearses will also see a $200 increase as their toll has risen from $100 to $300. Ferguson explained that there will be no increase in the tolls for public transportation and as such minibuses will continue to pay $200.
While Harbour Bridge toll increases had been mooted in June this year, their enforcement in two weeks’ time amid a raft of new fees and VAT burdens in this year’s budget will be seen as bad timing and this was immediately seized upon by the opposition PPP/C.
“The Office of the Leader of the Opposition views the astronomical increases in the tolls to cross the Demerara Harbour Bridge as most cruel, crass and insensitive,” a statement from Opposition leader Bharrat Jagdeo’s asserted yesterday.
“We have no doubt, that this increase will multiply the hardships and sufferings, which the Guyanese population will have to endure in 2017 and beyond,” the statement added.
Ferguson yesterday during questioning of the 2017 Budget allocations, told the Committee of Supply that there will be an increase in tolls for the crossing and listed those increases.
But the PPP/C says that it was not only the rise in the tolls that had it concerned but that the information was not told to the committee willingly.
“The manner in which the government concealed this measure from the public is equally reprehensible. This vital information was reluctantly disclosed in the Committee of Supply after intense scrutiny and questioning by our members of Parliament,” the Opposition Leader’s statement read.
The Party’s shadow attorney general Anil Nandlall added to the criticism.
“What we were told earlier in the year was that there was likely to be increases in the tolls. We never expected, firstly that the increase would be of such magnitude that is in some instances the increase is several hundred percent,” he complained to Stabroek News.
“Secondly, we expected the increase to be announced publicly and not surreptitiously hidden deep within the budget estimates and thirdly we believe that adequate notice would have been given to the population of what the rates are and when they are going to be implemented. All of this was absent so the population still does not know whether they have had the full impact of the 2017 budget measures,” he added.
He said that Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson should tell the nation how the increases were arrived at and if any analysis or studies were undertaken before.
“It is being given now in a piecemeal fashion and significantly how did the minister come up with these rates. Did he consult with anyone? Did he do any type of analysis to access the financial impact this will have on the bridge and on commuters? One is at a loss to comprehend what criteria the minister used in arriving in increases by several hundred percent in certain instances,” Nandlall stressed.
Further, he said, “This is the worst form of arbitrary and capricious governance, in relation to the attempt to conceal this increase from the population one is forced to question whether this now is not a new norm of non-transparency in government. This secrecy which surround these increases is reminiscent of the increase in ministerial salary in relation to which there was no public announcement and which the nation only learned of by an obscure notice published in the Official Gazette”.
In June of this year, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo addressed the expected increase in tolls.
“I believe that you have to situate any adjustment in the existing toll within the context of a question; Do we need or do we want a new, modern habour bridge across the Demerara River?…The answer is yes”.
According to Nagamootoo, everyone feels there is need for a better bridge which would take them across the river faster. He said that one could utilise the idea of a “fly pass”, explaining that after leaving the bridge this might be needed so that motorists do not go head-on into the traffic coming from the East Bank.
These would be at a cost and if you want to enjoy a better facility then initially the commuters must be able to make a deposit on the intention of the government to have a new bridge”, he posited.
He said that the second issue is that the bridge has been heavily subsidised. “If you look at the figures, you have close to $400M a year coming out of taxpayers’ money to subsidise the operation of the bridge, the repairs that have to be done on the bridge and then periodically if you have a bridge that is linked to pontoons you would have the stray trawler or vessels bumping into it occasionally and so you will always have structural damage”, the prime minister said.
According to Nagamootoo, a modern bridge should be one which should be rooted on a sound foundation “so that you can have constantly, vessels passing under the bridge rather than to open the bridge which causes delays”.
Nagamootoo said that with the doubling of the toll price for a motor car, “you would hear the shout that bridge increase by 100%. Now it’s not the percent. The question that you need to place on the table is that unless you have a cost recovery you will not be able to maintain this bridge or any other bridge and you might as well start doing it now, be frank and upright with the Guyanese people to let them know that if we want the better life and the better convenience then we are gonna have to pay a little more for that”.
He then made mention of the comparison between the prices paid by the users of the Berbice Bridge and the Demerara Habour Bridge, calling the difference in fees to use the two unfair.
“If you are dealing with two bridges…the Berbice people were paying ten times more, twenty times more than the commuters of the Demerara Bridge. So you are gonna have to find some balance”, he said.
According to Nagamootoo the two are the same type of facility.