THE SPECTACLE of Mr. Ezroy Millwood, barging into the offices, demanding to see the Minister of Transport or his deputy, failing which he would go over their heads, presumably to the Prime Minister, might have been a tragicomedy.It was all being played out on television, even with appropriate props, including the office phone that was made available to Mr. Millwood so he could inform whatever authority about his plan. It, of course, provided a bit of cheap television entertainment, but Mr. Millwood's action was also a searing metaphor of something more vulgarly nasty.
For the essence of Mr Millwood's complaint, or at least the one he made loudest, was that the police and Transport Authority were too busy removing the executive buses of his National Transportation Cooperative Society (NTCS) from the streets of the Kingston Metropolitan Region, for failing to operate without appropriate licences, which, he of course, disputes. Mr. Millwood also claimed that the Government's Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) has also failed to honour certain agreements undertaken when the Government, towards the end of the 1990s, took the decision to supply the bulk of the bus service for the capital.
Truth be told, whatever the facts about persistent extortion by the police, and the failings of the governmental authorities in fulfilling agreements with the NTCS, any demonstration by Mr. Millwood should have been to complain about the laxity of the Transport Authority in protecting commuters, pedestrians and other motorists from what many people consider to be the menace of the capital's minibuses, many of which operate under the umbrella of Mr. Millwood's organisation.
Indeed, it amazes us that Mr. Millwood would not know that the minibuses continue to race between bus stops, cut in and out of traffic without due regard for the traffic code and the law and, essentially, conduct themselves in a manner which most people hoped had ended when most of the minibuses were taken off the streets with the advent of the JUTC. The buses may be cleaner, the rides more expensive, but the Middle Passage mentality of the operators remains firmly in place. And it is getting worse.
What is noticeable, too, is that this aggressive reassertion of muscled, intimidatory and dehumanising approach to public transport is taking hold of the JUTC in the absence of a policymaker with a clear vision of what is possible and a firm belief that Jamaicans deserve the best.
The point is that public transportation is often a good barometer of the standards in a society, including the relationship between a community's well-being and economic advancement. We are forced to question Mr. Millwood's appreciation of these things and to abhor the Government's tolerance for the re-emerging nastiness.
