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Between the Blinds by Dr. Nalin Swaris

The ceasefire, however tenuous, has brought a respite from the killings - no men and women being cut down in the flower of their youth, no exploding land mines killing or maiming for life combatants and unsuspecting civilians. Outside the war zone people go about their business without the constant fear that the LTTE might strike without warning or that a Black Tiger might pounce on its prey and kill innocent people who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. I like so many others breathed a sigh of relief.

But one night last week I woke up in a cold sweat. I was jolted awake by the nightmaring realisation that private bus operators are agitating to transport passengers from Colombo to Jaffna. My God, I thought the killing has barely stopped and these guys want to kill and maim in the North as well.

The privatisation of the national transport system, epitomizes the type of cowboy capitalism, introduced to this country in the name of 'free market', economics. It has led to anarchy on our roads. A retired DIG Traffic Police told me there are 15,000 private buses and 12,000 bus operators! No wonder these individuals can do very much what they want.

Who can hold them to collective responsibility and accountability? They surface only when their profits are threatened. Our governments are not interested because those who suffer daily while struggling to get to work and back are the low income groups and the lower middle classes. Our politicians have their luxury cars - let the people be grateful for what they get: after all everybody is an 'operator' of some sort or other. Operators of Lanka unite and strike down, you have nothing to lose but a world of profit to gain.

When it was decided to let private companies take over public transport, the then Minister of Transport distributed operating licenses like confetti, to just about any one who owned or could invest in anything on four wheels. There was some talk that this done for a certain consideration. Profit-seeking cowboys grabbed the most profitable routes. They ran the buses until they ran down not before had several times more money was made than the original speculation. Even vans converted to buses were permitted to carry passengers. Crowded into these 'battas', people were forced to travel crammed cooped and bent over because of the low roofs.

The PA government when it came to power took these midgets off the roads and only large and medium sized buses fit for human transport were permitted. Beyond that little was changed. This decision to provide larger buses to the travelling public, created a new menace. The large buses with their weight and length required well-trained drivers, aware of safe driving and traffic regulations. But our 'operators' seem to think that just about any joker with only a vague understanding about how a steering wheel, accelerator, brake and most importantly - the horn - functions, is good enough to be entrusted with transporting human beings.

Standing on Galle Road I have watched with an admixture of amazement and horror the speed with which these huge monsters are driven, how the drivers weave in an out of the flow of traffic, how when knowing they have to stop at a halt just twenty yards away they lunge into the inside lane, overtake another bus and lunge back into the outside lane to reach the halt before another cowboy. Utterly regardless of other road uses the drivers race each other from halt to halt. They stop where they want, generally, in the middle of traffic to unload or pick up passengers. Bus halts are treated as general markers for pedestrians to gather. Bus bays are treated as quaint curiosities. I have yet to see a driver draw up close to the curb and stop. Their main concern is to block the traffic behind them so that they can take off again without let or hinder.

The situation outside Colombo is equally horrific. Intercity buses are driven at breakneck speed, so that the driver and conductor can reach the destinations as soon as possible, pick up their human cargo and dash back.

Speeding buses with bad drivers, defective controls and brakes, plough into bus halts and careen of the road and plunge down hill-sides killing and maiming. It happens daily. No one cares.

The conductors are a breed apart - a bunch of unkempt and uncouth ruffians whose only concern is to pile in as many passengers as possible. You are lucky if you are issued a ticket. An elderly Tamil gentleman - a frail pensioner - told me that when he insisted on a ticket and asked for change, the conductor railed at him: "If this is not enough get out take a taxi or go to Jaffna". At every halt the conductor will pull in and pile on more passengers while shouting. "Move back. Move back. The inside of the bus, is a melee of torsos and limbs. Travelling by bus at peak hours is hunting time for sexual perverts.

Everyday women suffer in silence as they are violated by groping hands and invasive erectiles. With the general breakdown of public morality no one bothers. It's the new culture of laissez-faire, laissez-aller, laissez-passer. Jack it up. It's a Free Market baby. The Outlook Section of last Sunday's Observer (19 May, 2002) front-paged the horros of road travel under the headline 'Demons on Wheels'. The article carried pictures of men and women wounded and maimed in accidents caused by private bus drivers. It also gave figures of road casualties from the Traffic Police Head quarters and the National Hospital Colombo. The criminals are the bus drivers and their buses.

A communique issued by the National Council and published in the same issue of the Sunday Observer states that the cease-fire has up to now saved at least 1500 lives, since the average death toll during hostilities averaged 10 per day. Compare this with the average number of 6 deaths per day due to road accidents. According to figures published by Traffic Police Headquarters, in the year 2001 there were 52,027 road accidents of which 2,159 were fatal. Some where in the country there is a road accident every 10 minutes and a road death every five hours. Our motorists, and the bus operators have turned our roads into a battle field. There is a war going on our streets and highways. Has anyone noticed?

The madnesses and mayhem goes on without arrest. No one seems to care that lives are lost or ruined day in and day out; not the self appointed custodians of this very (un)civil society, not the religious leaders who perform funeral rites for those killed on our roads, not the politicians and not the successive Ministers of Transport.

It is to be hoped that the new Minister of Defence who is also the Minister of Transport will do something to defend the lives of our road users especially our children from road maniacs. Stop the Culture of Violence on our roads!

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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