THE rat race which often leaves passengers sitting for hours waiting for several buses to fill at the same time has commuters calling for an implementation of the turn system at all minibus parks.

It’s 1:00 pm Friday April 29th in Georgetown. The thermometer measures the heat in the blazing tropical sunny day at 90 degrees Fahrenheit. On the Berbice and Linden bus parks, the two parks of buses travelling the longest distances out of town, one notices at least three buses filling or loading at once. The buses each have a few passengers patiently waiting for them to fill up.

Commuters travelling from Georgetown to Linden often find themselves mobbed by touts and bus operators hawking for passengers as far as a corner or two from the actual bus park.  “Lef de woman alone!” one competitor cried to the others, “She goin wid me. Loose de woman bag!”  “Don’t worry wid he mods!” retorted an irate competitor, “He
bus empty, empty. Is jus two mo I need and I gone!”
“You all wait leh me see which bus gat de mos passenger an I gon decide when I reach de park” the exasperated passenger cried in desperation, trying to rescue her bag from one hawker and her hands from another.

Upon reaching the Linden park on the Hadfield Street side of the Parliament Buildings, the harassed traveller finds her bag loaded into the trunk of an almost empty bus, while the tout and conductor viciously guard it from her and competing operators, insisting that “Dis bus gon lef jus now; four people gone out de bus to come back!”

“He lie!” screamed the conductor of another empty bus employing the most uncouth verbal expletives to describe his rival.

“Loose de so and so woman bag! Come wid me mods; I lefin jus now! I jus wan two mo an I gane!”
The fatigued passenger finds herself being propelled against her will to the door of another empty bus while trying to liberate herself from her assailants.  “Oh God man!  Allyuh loose me nah!”  She protests at last in irritation.  “Allyuh aint gat no manners at all man!”

She manages at last to get herself seated in one of the similarly half-empty buses, while having to endure derisive comments from the hawker who brought her bag all the way to the park.  “Yuh see how yuh stay!” bawled the jilted conductor, “I fetch yuh bag. Yuh see how yuh ungrateful!”

“I neva ask yuh to fetch it!” retorted the woman.  “You all does behave as if people owe youall something! I gat a right to travel wid which bus I want”.

“All right mods, all right!” bitterly returned the man walking away from the door of the bus chosen by the passenger, who by this time is beginning to show signs of weariness at her ordeal.  “Nex time deh!!”

“Dis is de behaviour every time,” the passenger said in response to a question this reporter sitting in the same bus with her asked while enquiring about the behaviour of conductors, drivers and touts on the Linden Park.  “They all want to full at de same time, and yuh always gat three and four bus wid three or four passengers each. If they fill one at a time, all dem passengers could go in one bus. De bus gon full faster, and passengers wouldn’t have to wait forever while several buses fulling slowly at the same time.”

As we sat waiting in the heat for our bus to fill up, the scene of haggling and quarreling over passengers is repeated several times over, with passengers being guided or tugged to various buses, each trying to leave before the other.

During this time, the passengers are regaled with the most indecent and vulgar expressions from the bus operators and others present on the park who seem to have no regard either for themselves, their passengers or little children present.

The bus we sat in finally pulled off at 2:10 pm. In the mean time, another bus had left the park a few minutes in advance of ours. This is the system that obtains on almost all of the minibus parks in Georgetown.

The U.G. bus park and the Enterprise Bus Park were the only ones this paper observed working the turn system. On these two parks, one notices that all the operators direct the passengers to the one bus filling. In this way, passengers do not have to wait for indefinite periods of time in separate buses filling at the same time.

“We try to implement the turn system on other parks but the operators don’t cooperate,” a police source told this newspaper.  “It seems like the minibus operators prefer the rat race system,” the police added.