Confronting…bus drivers

Your Eyewitness rides the bus… not every day, but enough to know what’s going on behind the present furore being raised by bus drivers/owners over their unilateral hiking of their fares. He’s old enough to’ve experienced the “Tata Big Buses” and the Government handling of public transportation – and he experienced the “Minibus” revolution that took place as part of the Government encouraging the Private Sector to deal with moving folks from point A to point B!!
But things have changed since then, innit?? The economy’s improved to such an extent that we’re experiencing a situation of “a car in every home” and, in many cases, a car for every adult member of the family!! There are also the “Taxi Base” in every village – from where you can summon taxis to get you from even the back of your village to the front!! This means that bus users nowadays are generally those folks who can’t afford cars – and there’s greater competition for their bodies since expenses for the bus drivers gotta be met!!
And we return to the face-off between the bus drivers who wanna raise fares and the Government that says they can’t!! Now there are some who’ll say the Government should butt out since this economy’s being run on private enterprise principles!! Meaning that the market of demand and supply should be making the decisions on the cost of the service the bus drivers provide!! Also meaning that Governments should keep their big noses OUT!! But it aint so simple, is it??
To encourage private buses to take over from the old Tata buses back in the day, the Government made a HUGE concession to minibus owners!! The customs duties that DOUBLED the prices of vehicles brought into Guyana were effectively WAIVED for them – saving them MILLIONS!! Then when gas prices started going up recently because of the war games in the Strait of Hormuz, the Government intervened to ease the burdens by waiving taxes on gas – making it CHEAPER than before the Middle East flare-up!!
So yes… the Government can act for the “greater good” – by helping poor commuters afford getting around!! The bus drivers want to eat their cake and have it too!! They want the Government to subsidise their operations but not the man in the street who wants to be the man in the bus!! Well, they can do what’s done in free enterprise economies when businesses can’t make a profit – get out of the bus business!! The Government will then be forced to start from where they got involved in the first place – bring back the Big Buses even if they aren’t Tatas!!
We might even finally solve the scourge of boom box noise pollution in buses!!

…a democratic deficit?
The one-woman FGM party of ex-PNC thwarted wanna-be leader Walton-Desir has provoked a storm over what she claims to be the Government stifling democracy in our fair (if rainy!) land – for not convening Parliament in over three months!! As usual with opposition politicians who criticise the Government for not being “independent” enough and being too thick with western furrin Governments, she complained to the self-same western furrin Governments!! These worthies, in turn, sanctimoniously intoned as to how frequent meetings of parliament are the very essence of democracy!!
Government rep Texiera responded – like the terrier she resembles! – by snapping that at least they coulda checked with her Government!! And if they’d done so, they would’ve found out that a setting was being scheduled two weeks down the road!! Your Eyewitness thinks Walton-Desir’s upset that the opposition leader’s in the news – and wants to show she’s relevant by speechifying in Parliament!!
She doesn’t wanna accept that the opposition can also oppose by working in the field!! Lazy!!

…Mad Maduro’s operatives
The trial of the Venezuelan bomber of that gas station in Midtown GT should get greater coverage!! Our people and the world oughta know about the vicious war Mad Maduro – and his deputy Dangerous Delcy – waged against us!!