HIGHWAY HORROR: LACK OF LEADERSHIP

LIKE thousands of other motorists, I sat through the recent four-hour highway horror.

To be sure, the agonising gridlock was not an isolated experience.

North-South commuters endure daily traffic congestions and count it a minor miracle if they complete the run in a relatively fair time.

Wednesday’s nightmare was caused by auto mishaps, an unattended depression on the roadway, and traffic signs associated with the widening of a short area.

On its own, each matter was poorly managed by the authorities.

Put together, they created a traumatic highway-long jam and bottleneck in link roads that aggravated usually tolerant motorists.

In a land in which fuel costs have climbed five times in recent years, there were thousands of unproductive hours and vehicles stood at a standstill for several minutes at a time.

That was, except for blue light-bearing luxury vehicles – bearing senior officials or judges, no doubt – that breezed along the shoulder of the highway.

The traffic bottleneck was a graphic example of our non-performing public sector.

The Ministry of Works did not consider it essential to prioritise repairs to the Macaulay depression, and so, permit free flow on a highway that transports hundreds of thousands each day.

A few days earlier, Minister Rohan Sinanan and sidekick Rishi Sookhai announced the expansion of a limited area, and typical of local public works, there is a jumble of traffic signs and posturing officials.

There were no police officers on duty along the entire crisis-hit highway.

Isn’t there a specific police division for these duties?

The police chief – may be distracted by another plea to the Almighty – was clearly not informed or didn’t give a damn.

The protective services were not troubled about the potential threat to law and order.

There was no intervention from Sinanan; the Express reported on Thursday that he did not respond to the newspaper’s enquiries.

The only statement from a public official was Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee terming the experience “cruel.”

Surely there would be attention to the emergency by some of the 40-plus radio stations, I thought.

So I shifted along the bandwidth – enduring the latest spree of soca and chutney claptrap – to find that our electronic media houses were similarly disconnected.

Certainly, there would be reporting on the hourly newscasts with statements from relevant public officials.

No, the newsrooms weren’t interested either.

Instead, the lead news item was – hear this! – the declaration by the Met Office of the start of the dry season.

I endured the rest of my snail’s-pace journey wishing V.S. Naipaul had been able to revisit this bleak land – “uncreative, cynical” – he left behind in colonial times.

The traffic horror was a mere snapshot of a country without effective leadership and in which the elites are detached from the suffering masses.