Dear Editor,
I recently started driving a bus on Route 45 after regular work hours to earn some extra money to support my family. A major challenge with the Route 45 Park is that sections of it are completely taken over and overrun by vendors, North of Demico. Some vendors and customers park their vehicles directly where the Route 45 buses pick up passengers in front of Stabroek Market itself, completely blocking the entrance to the 45 Bus Park, forcing the Route 45 buses to block the carriageway around that area. Buses are now forced to join the line on the road itself, versus where the vendors and their customers’ cars block the Route 45 entrance. This apparently happens in the afternoons/evenings.
While I understand that vendors are hustling to make a living, they cannot block the public transport system in what is probably the most congested area in Guyana. They see bus drivers and passengers trying to get where they are going every day.
It is unacceptable to occupy and become a public nuisance on the Route 45 Bus Park, or for that matter any other Bus Park. While I am familiar with the touts on this Route, I was taken aback by one who was brazen enough to give me a well-articulated script on his opinion of the ‘system’ on the Route 45 Park, even detailing that on Mondays through Fridays, touts have to be paid $120 or above for every bus loaded (up from $100), and $200 on Saturdays. The Police advised that touts are not to be paid, so to pay them is to encourage racketeering in its most basic form.
Touts are a notorious public nuisance whose existence continues to extract tremendous taxes on both drivers and passengers on a daily basis.
As if this was not enough, he went on to explain that only certain buses could work “after-hours” (whatever that time happens to be) and that I could not. This is a ‘tout,’ telling a driver, hustling to balance his family budget, of a bus owned by someone who invested millions putting it on the road to earn money for his family, that he, an unregulated body, was not allowing me to drive in accordance with the laws of Guyana to earn an income, and further, that he ‘laid out the rules’ for me, that he ‘runs things,’ and that he was denying the owner of the bus also, an income from his investment.
Later Saturday evening around 8 o’clock while I was in the line in the park, he appeared at the driver side of my bus and reiterated that he meant what he said, that I couldn’t pick up passengers on the park. Some other bus drivers and some car drivers working with him arranged their vehicles so that I was ultimately forced out of the line. This particular tout is someone police would do well to have a conversation with, since in addition to his apparent assertion of an organized racket on the Route 45 Bus Park.
Following on the heels of my run-in with that tout Saturday night, I was greeted by a group of Route 45 bus drivers who were apparently in league with the tout, who together orchestrated their buses to keep me from loading passengers. One particular bus driver, BKK 4233, was apparently coordinating the other bus drivers, apparently had no regard for the Police, even after I returned to tell them that I had reported the matter to the Traffic Department at Brickdam, that I preferred not to create problems with the police for them to take away from them earning an income.
He told me that I would have to get off the Route 45 Zone, and continued to direct the other bus drivers to block me from picking up passengers. I would here encourage the Police get deeper down into the racket orchestrated by this driver, and identify and investigate all the touts harassing both bus drivers and passengers on the Route 45 Bus Park.
Sincerely,
Craig Sylvester
