Dear Editor,

The Transport Operators Development Sustainable Services (TODSS) and its associate groups in the public transport sector will do everything in our powers to reduce carnage on our roads. And, while we will do everything to instil discipline in our members and reduce indiscipline among rogue operators, we wish to make it abundantly clear that we will not take responsibility for the mayhem on our roads.

It is impossible to take responsibility for the ills of plantation people who believe that if they are not whipped they cannot do better. We cannot take responsibility for illegal operators, neither can we take responsibility for an institution that we did not create. Some agencies are making billions from illegal operators on our roads, and only they can change the present system.

This year we have begun to put in place some 125 major events and activities islandwide at a cost of $18 million, and includes major training and development, a multifaceted and diversified public education campaign, and a major alternative investment programme for the sector.

We will only take responsibility when the Government makes it compulsory for all public passenger vehicle operators to be members of a transport association so we can have some level of operational contract.

And, on the other hand, without a national public passenger transport policy it is seemingly impossible to carry out any policing or regulations in the sector.

Finally, road indiscipline plus State and private sector corruption equals 386 fatal deaths on our roads last year.

It must be noted that less than five per cent of deaths on the road last year was as a result of registered public passenger vehicle collisions, but we take no comfort in this.

Still, many people subscribe to the theory that we are the cause of some of these crashes.

one of the plans we have in our Road Safety Manifesto this year is to commission a survey to ascertain, among several things, the real cause of fatal crashes and why it is that people/communities prefer to take illegal vehicles.

Transport Minister Robert “Bobby” Montague has some regulations coming for the sector and we think they will have some positive impact on its operations, but without the personal and internal life skill changes we will continue to be field slaves.

Egeton Newman

President

Transport Operators Development Sustainable Services

transopsdevelop@yahoo.com