PUBLIC TRANSPORT AND WATER TARRIFS are two extremely politically sensitive issues for any Government in Barbados.That is primarily because any increases for these two utilities impact heaviest on the poorest segments of the population.
Successive administrations, in seeking to maintain or raise their popularity levels, have struggled to find that delicate balance between what really are expensive social services that are essential, and enabling those agencies, at a minimum, meet their operating costs.
But it is a tough call for politicians in dealing with competing, if deserving, interests.
In the case of water, one recalls, for instance in the dying days of the Owen Arthur Administration the then Minister of Utilities Anthony Wood announcing an increase in bus fares effective January 2005. Three weeks later, probably after much internal discussion and emotional handwringing, Arthur said there would be no change and that Government would have to manage the situation.
“It is the poor people who use buses,” he rationalized.
Wood had proposed a hike from $1 to $2 for general commuters and from $1 to $1.50 for schoolchildren in uniform, in an attempt to manage an annual deficit of $20 million at the state-run Transport Board and a debt of more than $6 million to suppliers.
Now in 2015, enter the privately-owned public service vehicles (PSVs), which are very popular with the young and young at heart, and have moved from being a complementary service to the board to being perceived as a dominant partner in transport services.
But true to form, some people who find themselves in positions of dominance, either real or imagined, are often guilty of the Eighth Deadly Sin – arrogance!
Clearly not immune from the economic hardship facing many Barbadians, the PSVs sought to assert their position of dominance by demanding a fare hike mainly on the basis that the current $2 was insufficient due to their high maintenance costs.
I’m told they proposed $2.50 and even threatened a later averted strike!
“What we are prepared to do is to sit with the relevant authorities to look at how the increase can be [implemented] without having a direct effect on persons who have a number of children and so on,” a spokesman for one group was quoted in the Press as saying.
“We’re hoping that if the Government cannot grant us at this moment, due to circumstances, the opportunity to have the increase in fares, I believe the time would have to come for us to speak up about duty-free concessions for our vehicles.”
As a loosely organized, amorphous group under at least two different umbrella bodies along with the independents, it was always going to be that in their dog-eat-dog world, not enough of them would likely have made the strike sacrifice for the greater good.
Minister of Transport Michael Lashley is on record as having expressed a preference to deal with one representative body, which to me, makes perfect sense, with the added advantage of giving the PSVs greater leverage in unity.
He said after the latest meeting with the PSVs that there was “an undertaking” with respect to public transportation.
“We will work with my ministry and other people in the interim to resolve smaller issues,” Lashley said. “The other issues we have to work within the financial constraints of the Budget which will obviously take some time.”
Fares have already been raised once under this Government (2011) from $1.50 to $2, and no amount of importuning by the PSVs in these tough economic times will succeed.
Further, it seemed to me oddly thoughtless and unrealistic for the PSVs to expect a fare increase in isolation from the Transport Board, whose deficit and debt troubles have, if anything increased, rather than declined.
Clearly, a Government that has been piling on tax after tax on the backs of an already over-burdened Barbadian populace would be loath to add another imposition with such a wide incidence of impact.
If Government has determined that the Transport Board is going to have to make do with the existing tariff, then the PSVs, for all their troubles, will have to do likewise.
The demand by the PSVs was a palpable miscalculation and in addition to their myriad “sins” on the roads they took a risk of being also perceived by the public as a greedy and grasping lot.
Albert Brandford is an independent political correspondent. Email [email protected]
