I have been following with interest newspaper reports of the terrible state of the interior road although the government has spent millions of dollars on maintenance. There clearly needs to be more money spent on the maintenance and upgrading of these roads and the time has come for others to assist.
The operators of the crossing at Sherima Itaballi, Mango Landing and Lethem immediately come to mind. These operators run a monopoly business at these crossing and charge exorbitantly high fees for the services. They are allowed to do whatever they wish. Users are at the mercy of these people who make millions of dollars on a daily basis and do nothing to assist with maintenance of these roads leaving everything to the Government and leaving stranded the very users of the crossing who are exploited by the operators taking advantage of their monopoly.
This is a great shame and I hope that the President looks into this matter urgently. The costs for the service keeps going up all the time and these operators appear to enjoy important support from some unseen source. The reason for the constantly rising prices is the result of the monopoly.
Surely the time has come to open this economic activity to competition and allow others to operate in this section.
We are daily reminded that competition is a good thing and this is clearly an area where the consumers can benefit from the competition.
Also, it must be a condition of allowing competition, that whoever is allowed to operate these crossing must also contribute substantially to the maintenance and upgrading of the roads preferably by way of serious special tax on their revenues, say about 16% “off the top” as a start.
These two things must be linked because the frustrating situation now exists where having paid these greedy operators ever increasing on hefty fees to use the service, the consumers find themselves “stuck in mud” on the other side.
If competition is good for the Pegasus and GT&T then we must move swiftly  promote serious competition at these crossing and at the same time raise much needed revenues for the maintenance and upgrading of these roads used by the same users. This is both fair and necessary. I hope that the President reads this letter.