State treating transport operators with little respect

Garnett Roper, Contributor

VARIOUS TAXI associations across the island in the past week promised or mounted protests in response to a number of issues confronting operators in the transport industry. The grouses seem in the main to do with how they are treated by the Transport Authority. Variously, they have ended up with a single demand, the resignation of the head of the Transport Authority, Mr Daniel Dawes. They have claimed widespread harassment and improper seizing of vehicles, along with harsh punishment for minor infractions like incorrect uniforms, as reason for their protests.

It would be a mistake for the rest of us in Jamaica who are not directly affected by the self-evident mistreatment of operators in the transport industry to dismiss the concerns of the operators about how they are being treated, as merely private squabbles or matters of personal invectives. Anyone who pays careful attention to the complaints being made by the transport operators would quickly recognise that the mistreatment of transport operators tells a story about the state of things in Jamaica at this time. I believe it betrays a residue of inequality and dispossession in Jamaica. It also reflects the abuse of power, when it comes to certain classes of the Jamaican people, by representatives of the Jamaican State. The failed protest of their mistreatment by the transport operators indicates their own powerlessness and the unresponsiveness of the public to the suffering of members of the underclass.

As I understand it, transport operators have regarded the measure imposed upon them, in particular the wide range of options available to members of the Transport Authority team to seize and impound their motor vehicle and impose draconian fines upon them, as oppressive. What is more, members of the Transport Authority appear to be capricious, arbitrary and unrestrained in the use of force against transport operators. There is an incident which has not been widely reported in the media, in which it is alleged that members of the Transport Authority pursued a motorcyclist who was hit from his motorcycle and killed along the Dyke Road in Portmore. More recently in Half-Way Tree, it is alleged that members of a team of transport inspectors used their vehicle to intentionally ram a vehicle being driven by a transport operator, in order to apprehend him. The transport operator suffered severe injuries.

Uncivilised treatment

Some of the things that are reported about the measures taken to enforce what are considered laws and regulations in the dominion of the Transport Authority have nothing to do with the rule of law and do not belong in a civilised society. When one takes the trouble to listen to the complaints being made by transport operators at the treatment meted out to them by the Transport Authority, one is forced to ask, in whose name is the Transport Authority acting? What social good are they seeking to protect that allows them to treat Jamaican citizens in such a manner?

Superintendent of Police in charge of traffic, Radcliffe Lewis, has given clear indication that there is a reserve capacity to carry out the bidding of political masters against members of the Jamaican underclass. SP Lewis, when he learnt of the intention of transport operators to take protest action in St Catherine, called upon robot taxis to fill the breach. The goodly superintendent saw it as his duty to thwart the effectiveness of the protest by the Transport Authority and blunt their message by any means necessary; he made the illegal legal for a day. He was asked to explain his action in an interview with Dionne Jackson Miller on RJR's 'Beyond the Headlines', and he explained that the robot taxis are like a reserve army that may be called out one day and returned to barracks the following day.

No doubt, transport operators have contributed to things as they are. This does not give the state the right to abuse, oppress them and deny them a hearing. The wedge we think we drive between legal and illegal operators will come back to haunt us. Trust me on this one.