Apart from the Albert Street riots in 2005, the most memorable events
of unrest in the past 5 years have been the bus riots: there were four of them,
two in Orange Walk and two in Benque Viejo. They were nothing nice, and it seemed
to us, they had the effect of tipping the balance of power in the transport
industry away from the regulator – which is government, and in favour
of the bus owners.
That’s because government was forced into or accepted a position
of weakness – compromised by the Novelo’s mess and then incapacitated
by its own fear of popular disapproval. So the bus owners assumed a position
of power – striking whenever government proposed something they didn’t
like - which would in turn foment public unrest, forcing government to capitulate.
But there’s a new sheriff in the transport industry. That’s
Minister Melvin Hulse, and in meetings across the country, he’s been telling
bus owners about his no nonsense approach, which demands that either they deliver,
or depart. He met in Orange Walk yesterday and told our affiliates at Channel
10 – that’s it’s all about the end user of the bus services.
Hon. Melvin Hulse, Minister of Transport
“So what we want to ensure is that there is a national transportation
grid, a national transportation program where we ensure reliable services on
safe buses, punctual buses that will take the people safely; when they leave
that they know that at 3:30 in the morning there will be a bus leaving to go
to Belize and they can get on it with their clean clothes and not to get dirty
because as I explained to them, the buses do not belong to the people who own
the buses, the purpose of the buses is the for the people – moving people.
So if there were no people then nobody would have a bus.
I have explained to people that they do not have right to a bus permit,
that is a privilege and an opportunity for a business but their priority must
be so. The public has a right to complain when the bus is late, when the bus
is dirty, when the bus is overcrowded and over the years the owners and the
operators of buses think that the public grumble too much. They have a right
because they are paying, it is a service being provided. And then these people
have drunken people coming on and bringing liquor and they are bringing machetes
and it’s all jammed up. You have workers piling up and you have paid to
sit down and then they turn around and say this is their bus and they can do
what they want. No, you cannot do what you want.”
Hulse is currently touring to meet bus owners in the four zones: north,
south, west and central.
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