So the Lord’s anger burned against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years. – Numbers 32:13
THE ISRAELITES DISOBEYED you, O Lord, but what have the people of Barbados done You to deserve 40 years of a torturous transportation system?
The picture in a recent edition of the NATION might well be mistaken for that of the Israelites, languishing in the wilderness for 40 years. For it seems that long – and in fact might be longer – that we have suffered under the incompetence and perhaps indifference of those on whom we depend to provide us with that all-important social service, transportation.
It is a picture worth ten thousand words, for in it we see suffering; we see incompetence; we see lack of vision; we see indifference; we see hopelessness. For 40 years we have suffered with this bastard version of a national transportation system, an embarrassment for a country that fancies itself on the way to developed world status and that is wont to boast of punching above
its weight.
The only punch here is the knockout delivered to the thousands of Barbadian commuters whose unfortunate plight has placed them at the mercy of the national plague known as the public transport system.
All over the developed world, and indeed in some developing nations, it is recognised that an efficient transport system is pivotal to a thriving economy. Everything we do is linked in some way or other to our ability to get from one place to another in a timely fashion. Big nations with more resources
than we have are able to afford fast transit systems like rail to supplement the road transport system.
These systems are not cheap, but nations with competent and visionary leaderships invest in them because they understand the consequences of not doing so.
There is an island nation in the north Atlantic called Bermuda. At just over 20 square miles, it is a tiny fraction of the size of Barbados. But here is what the travel advisory website, TripAdvisor, had to say about its transport system:
“Bermuda has an excellent public transportation system – buses and ferries.
The system is relatively convenient, reliable, well maintained, clean, usually air-conditioned and relatively inexpensive (with the purchase of a one-day or multi-day transportation pass). The buses and/or ferries will take visitors to – or near to – almost anywhere visitors may want to go in Bermuda.”
A small country with tourism as its mainstay, and they are able to run an excellent transport service. No throngs of tired people waiting in bus terminals
for hours to get home after work; no standing at bus stops for hours only to realise there will be no bus. And, of course, they recognise that they are an island nation with the sea all around, so they have a ferry service.
I wonder how they are able to do it. Perhaps they don’t waste millions on lavish celebrations; frequent, first class travel by Government functionaries; tribal party councils that duplicate services offered by other agencies of government, and receptions for tourists at state house. Perhaps they so manage their financial resources that millions don’t go missing, never to be accounted for. Perhaps they have integrity legislation to minimise the chance of corruption.
Whatever the reasons, this small nation has achieved what a much larger country claiming to have the most intelligent people in the world cannot – not even after 40 years of trying.
The depressing spectre of another 40 years in the transportation wilderness,
it would seem, looms menacingly over our heads. So that in 2056, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be the ones in the picture of tired commuters waiting desperately on a moribund transportation system – waiting, like the children of Israel in the wilderness, without a shepherd to lead them out of their misery.
– OLUTOYE WALROND
