Last week Friday, Minister of Transport and Works John Boyce signalled Government’s intention to bring legislation to make public service vehicle owners accountable for traffic offences committed by their drivers.
“ZRs,” the minister said (and it was not clear whether he was also referring to minibuses), “have been identified as a source of bother in terms of conforming to traffic regulations.”
Dare we think that Barbados is finally arriving at a mature view of public transport?
Now, we know that Barbados has First World aspirations. In those countries the mass carrying to and fro of their citizens is an almost sacred thing.
Stringent regulations apply; the highest standards are in place for operatives, with the severest consequences for offenders – no excuses allowed. Timeliness, order, good grooming, courteousness, respect, scrupulousness in observance of law, dread of running afoul of passengers – that is generally the First World’s way in public transport.
But while loudly trumpeting our First World dreams, we have seemingly designated the travelling public as the lowest of the low, as cattle, as those who can be offended with impunity.
Hand them over to the unruly, to have their lives imperilled as drivers ignore traffic lights, drive on the wrong side of the road, take them the wrong way along one-way streets; to be treated with arrant contempt as the operatives assault their ears with loud music – all the while abusing their minds with filthy lyrics – and play fast and loose with their passengers’ schedules. Among other abhorrent practices.
Few things can challenge the behaviour of our public service vehicle operatives as nurturers of lawlessness. In any one trip you are likely to see up close the brazen flouting of the law probably a dozen times.
Is there anything else in our existence on this rock that brings us so skin-close to pervasive lawlessness? Have we really contemplated the effect of such on our view of law and order, on our own likelihood of complying with the law in other areas?
Perhaps the gravest offence is against the young. Yes, for travel to and from school we have given our schoolchildren free transport on the more disciplined Government-run vehicles.
But some on their way to school still opt for the ZRs and minibuses, and outside of school travel, masses of young people still move around using their services.
When young, impressionable minds are exposed time and again, time and again to such contempt for law and order, it must incline them in the same direction.
And people are asking why so many of our children are disrespectful, why they resist discipline, why they contend against any authority. In any given trip on a ZR or minibus, the leaders of tomorrow (and others) are being schooled in scofflawry.
It may be to our eternal shame that this society has allowed the rule of law to be insolently compromised, brutishly infringed when dealing with something as sacred as the mass transporting of its citizens.
The state of our privately run mass transport system is a national disgrace. Its perversity is enormously consequential. We must, for the good of our country, put an end to its waywardness.