City bus parks haven for petty thieves – drivers

…call for heightened security
…Chief Constable claims matter is out of his control

A number of short-drop taxi and minibus drivers who operate out of the Grove- Diamond bus park, in the Stabroek Market area, Georgetown have complained about City Constables not being present to address criminal activities at the minibus parks.

However, Chief Constable of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (MCC), Andrew Foo has since distanced the Constabulary, claiming that City Constables were not responsible for monitoring the bus parks.
The public transport drivers on Wednesday called for urgent attention to be given to the bus parks since they were almost impassable.
A 55-year-old driver, who has been operating for over 20 years now, said the City Constables were hardly there to monitor illegal activities, which occur far too frequently.
He complained that along with the City Constables being irregular at the parks, they tended to harass the drivers over ‘petty matters’ when they did decide to show up.
The driver also said that there was a lack of basic amenities on the parks, such as public washroom facilities. This, he noted, has resulted in drivers urinating at the parks, which leads to them being arrested by the Constables.

While he admitted that urinating in public is unacceptable (it is also a criminal offence), he contended that for this type of behaviour to be eradicated, the city needed to provide public facilities for drivers.
“I would suggest, and it got hundreds of taxi drivers and minibus drivers around here, they should install a public urinal just for these drivers because they keep harassing the drivers unnecessarily … I would suggest that the City Council install a urinal, because we deserve it, these vehicles don’t run by magic, we paying taxes to run these vehicles at every level, all levels – GRA, the spare parts store, the gas station. We buying gas and we taxes going back to the State, all these the State collecting tax why they can’t install a simple urinal for the drivers?” Singh, a taxi driver, related.
He added that instead of focusing on the criminal activities at the minibus parks, City Constables are there to arrest persons caught urinating in public.
Another bus driver, Carlyle Harry, who plies the Georgetown-Grove route, said there was need for more monitoring of criminal activities around the parks to eliminate the high number of thieves in the area.
He added that a washroom was definitely necessary for the drivers.
When this newspaper contacted the Chief Constable, he said, “City Constables are not responsible for monitoring bus parks. We cannot afford to police the entire city, because our numbers would not permit us to.”
It was subsequently explained by Foo that City Constables deal with matters such as persons breaching road laws, minor robberies, and disorderly behaviour.
“We try to do whatever we can,” he pointed out.

Resurfacing parks
Meanwhile, the drivers also complained of the need for the minibus parks in the area to be resurfaced.
“This short-drop to Grove park need doing. The road here is terrible and a set of holes here deh brukin up yuh wheels. It really need doing. So I would be happy if the authorities can just look into it for us,” a driver told this publication.
That driver said he has been working that route for over a year and the situation continued to get worse as the days pass, especially when it rained. He said he has only seen the park being cleaned, “that’s all. No patching and it got a set of big holes. It really needs doing. They do the roads and they leave the parks. The bus sticking when it rains. People got to push fuh just let the bus move.”
Another short-drop car driver, Winston Albert said he would like to see the road being done along with a urinal for the drivers.
“The park is in a real deplorable state, it is so messed up that the gravel and thing, whenever the buses spin, the gravel would spin and hit your windscreen; it’s just like if it’s a bush road. I glad if the guys could come and do something about it. When it rains, the park is actually impassable, so they really need to come and see what they can do about it urgently,” another driver lamented.
He, like the others, called for more security on the parks to protect users, since “them thieves would just be robbing people and them thing, you alone wouldn’t go and try and stop or apprehend a thief; it gotta be a set of them, so we should get more security in plain clothes.” (Davina Ramdass)