Dawn RitchTHE PORTMORE toll is destined to end in tears. It's going to be tears in Portmore, where, quite reasonably, homeowners fail to see why it should be either just or moral to charge them to walk through their own front door.
Residents of Portmore who invested in that vast dormitory community, were never told in their contracts that the causeway would become a toll corridor. Indeed so numerous are those homes in Portmore, that it could be called the change purse of Highway 2000.
I don't think it's fair to be anybody else's change purse but your own. The proposed toll to the residents of Portmore goes even further than that. For that community it is straight and plain cut-purse at any price.
The distance to be travelled by people from Portmore on this new highway is only three miles. It's from yah so to deh so. For a teeny weeny distance like that any toll too low would still be unfair.
In fact, if I had to pay for it, and I'm glad I don't, I wouldn't pay more than $20. The Government of Jamaica issued the currency and it should be legal currency for them.
If I accept that I have to pay a toll every time I open or close my own front door the highest I'll personally go is $20. That is an awful lot in anybody's language to pay for the privilege of an access which ought to be guaranteed.
The existence of Port-more was predicated upon the basis of the causeway. I doubt anybody buying a house then ever dreamt that the causeway would be replaced by a highway they'd have to pay to use. The old causeway was like everybody's front drive, part of their house.
I think it most unfair therefore, to lock up tax- payers' front drive and charge them a tariff to use it, when the Government isn't even paying any of their mortgages. A government can do whatever it wants, but a toll to Portmore shows a want of feeling.
FINANCED BY PENSION FUNDS
I'm glad I don't live over the waters because I'd be spending my day on a bench in the police station. If the Government and highway operators don't think that $20 is a lot of money, they should try earning some and stop using ours.
After all, it was this country's private and public pension funds that financed the new highway, and therefore, effectively, the French operators.
There's no court, no government that will ever convince me that it's right to charge Portmore a toll just to open their front door to try to earn a living, and come back home at night.
To claim that travelling through Ferry is the alternative route is an assertion of the most ludicrous proportions. That route is vastly longer and prone to flooding.
When the residents of Portmore bought their homes they did so with the expectation that they wouldn't have to go through flooding in order to go to work. All that on top of high taxes and light bills, school fees and school books is nothing short of a wickedness. This Portmore toll is an expression of abject cynicism towards the most disciplined community in Jamaica.
I feel sure that back then, if anyone had told them they'd have to pay a toll, or the Causeway might fall down, nobody would have bought a house out there except the very rich.
And then it would have been an entirely different community, and nobody would be quarrelling about the cost of the toll today. But Portmore was not designed as that, and in my opinion, is being given short shrift today.
In handing down its judgment against the residents and in favour of the state, the court expressed sympathy with the plight of the residents, but was bound by the strictures of the law.
AN INJUSTICE
It seems to me, therefore, that the law in this particular case has created an injustice to the citizens of the municipality of Portmore. The court sees the justification of the residents, but must agree with the law.
There is a difference, however, between being just, and being legally correct. In the case of Portmore, the Government is merely being legally correct. Where the law creates an injustice, the Government has an obligation to step in to balance the rights of the people, the rights of the state, and the rights of the contracting parties in Highway 2000.
This right royal mess is just one of the many booby traps departing Prime Minister P. J. Patterson laid for his successor. Mrs. Simpson Miller is going to need a strong stomach.
Creepy crawlies are going to come slithering out from under every rock as soon as it's lifted. They are a sign of the sheer nastiness in store.
The irony is of course, that if Madame Prime Minister does anything to ease the plight of Portmore, she will instantly be accused of being a populist. And then all the pundits will congratulate themselves on their earlier analyses.
Ezroy Millwood, one of the last formal private sector bus companies in the island, has already asked that passenger buses serving Portmore get a concession on the toll. I'm glad he was out of the starting gates early. The Jamaica Labour Party is right to make a political issue of it. A lack of real leadership in the JLP or state power makes it titular, but worth pursuing nevertheless.
A cruel and costly injustice is being paid to Portmore. Nobody should have to pay even a dollar to come out of their own doorway.
