I humbly ask the Hon. Minister of Works and Transport, Rohan Sinanan to give total consideration in fixing the national roadway before venturing to bring in 300 or so buses.
Mr. Minister, the entire road system has fallen apart, and you continuously receive complaints from the public and from the media.
Let us take the Brasso Caparo Valley Road, which is ornamented with landslides, depressions, extra-sized pot holes, overgrown grass, broken bridges, no railings on some, and the list continues unabated. Some of the roadways on the Brasso Caparo route, include Chickland Road, Carr Trace Ext. Sharpe Road, Durham Mills….
Bringing these buses to traverse our national road system, would be a total backward move, as they would have to travel on mere dirt roads.
Mr. Minister, the present bus system is an poorly run. For example, three buses ply the Brasso Caparo Valley Road several times a day, there are few passengers in any one of them. They run on their own steam.
Another point is that they will using electric power. Where will they be powered as most times T&TEC remains dysfunctional. Frequent outages.
I commend you for that vision, but your vision remains short-sighted in this case, as indeed in several others.
Why don’t you consider a national rail system, which will be cheaper in the long run. The infrastructure on the old Trinidad Government Railways (TGR) remains intact. It remains a national tragedy that Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams as his gift to the people of Trinidad and Tobago, shortly after Independence in1962, was to shut down the rail system. That decision remains a national sore on our landscape.
Mr. Minister put on your thinking cap, and rework the basic needs for a proper transportation system.
I am sure that the buses would be an additional cost to the taxpayers, but borrowing and more borrowing. We must always remember that our land is no longer surrounded by water. but by borrowing.
The backs of the people of this country cannot endure any more borrowing.
Trinidad and Tobago needs sensible leadership, not political leadership because political leadership is for elections only.
PARAS RAMOUTAR
CAPARO