Ronald Thwaites | Unsustainable development paths

“We want to live like you in Kingston 6,” she said. “What about the big money civil servants just got”? Her tone turned dark at my question. “Is people like you get the big money. Just like what happened after slavery,” she snapped. “People like me still don’t see the progress.”

So to make do, this receptionist in the government office downtown controls two red plate taxis. Her gentleman who is a police officer is the beneficial owner of two more. He keeps that quiet. Public servants get good breaks from used-car dealers and a relative in New York sent some ‘real money’ (i.e., not Jamaican dollars) for the couple to “work” until she comes. Also, not to be discounted, my lady’s very wealthy MP believes in favouring taxi operators, essential as they are during politics time.

Their vehicles will never be impounded and they don’t have to be worried about tickets or traffic court. Their vehicles – Probox, Voxy and something else, are among those streaking between Papine and “Affichee”. The Road Code does not apply to them. A tax-free $15-20 grand most days dwarfs their government pay cheques.

There are thousands like that: all over the country. Taxi and security guard work are the two growth industries for working class people.

Contrary to The Gleaner’s editorial last Friday, this nation does have a public transportation policy. My people are it. In the metropolitan area, the JUTC is a half-dead old relic. You should see two mostly empty yellow buses lumbering after the overloaded taxi horde. They have given away their custom. Often they are deferential to the taxi man at their own bus stops. JUTC crews have surrendered their routes. Empty or full, two trips or four, bus company salaries are safe. We pay them. None but schoolers who pay half fare and old people with plenty time on their hands bother to wait for the big bus.

Taxpayers are bailing out the JUTC carcass by about $12 billion a year (Nigel, how does a tight guy like you ever allow such waste?). We will soon have to hug up significantly higher fares and find more capital to refresh the big bus fleet.

HAVE MERCY!

Now that the franchise holder has committed slow suicide by giving away, under political pressure, the substance of their (our) business, there is no way that they can ever be efficient. The minister, very unconvincingly, says we will get rid of diesel-consuming units and employ a cashless system, to avoid billions worth of theft and fraud. By whom? What about holding some people responsible for the losses? Ah, but Daryl and I know that would set off as much political “dandymite” as any attempt to regulate the red and white plate operators on the street.

My couple are well connected and know their power in this “chaka-chaka system”. If you trouble taxi-man money, the political administration and the financial institutions who lavish credit for motor vehicles will wobble and the public will rise up. So they have us by the cullions. We have created a system which is almost beyond our power to effectively reform. No wonder the OUR is behaving like a eunuch.

FREEDOM & ORDER

This issue goes beyond the mechanics of a public mobility. The present transport system describes Jamaican reality. Freedom to do as you please has been used to vanquish order on our roads as in many other spheres of national life. Trouble is that order, distinct from fascist repression, is the prerequisite to the sustained exercise of freedom; central to any possibility of a peaceful and flourishing society.

Consider the lifelong habits of respect for others, following rules, which our children are learning as they careen along a new version of the Middle Passage, in some uninsured Zong, to school and back. We are teaching them that doing whatever you can get away with to secure your advantage is the supreme principle of life.

Buying more big buses won’t solve the disorder. Adding 25 per cent more used cars each year will increase not mitigate the chaos. They will only aggravate the crushing heat. The fuel bill for what we have now will beggar the foreign exchange reserves and productivity levels show no sign of spiralling to offset our profligacy.

What’s needed is radical, consensual political will to rightsize JUTC to a school bus and special needs operation in all major townships; regulation of the private operators by persons who don’t have a conflict of interest and enforced driver training and retraining. The same applies to the motorcycle scourge.

Does either political party have the guts to really reform this mess? Those with tinted windows, sirens and outriders, to whom the law dare not apply – just like the robots, are doing more to subsidise affluence than to alleviate poverty of mind and circumstance.

THE TEACHER DRAIN

In a particular quality education circle of less than 20 schools, just over 60 teachers who were in class last June have left. Fully a half of them were senior teachers and others with long years of experience. Replacements have been found from rookie teachers and high school graduates. This cannot be good enough and it’s just a matter of time before the results prove it. Last week’s crowing that the CAPE and CSEC results show “marked improvement” is a welcome but improbable miracle.

I plead for consensus to fix public transportation and the teacher drain. Both matters speak to human dignity, shared values and vital social outcomes.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at the UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.