Dear Editor,
I recently started driving a route 45 bus after regular work hours to earn some extra money to support my family.
A major challenge with the route 45 bus park is that sections of it are completely taken over and overrun by vendors, north of Demico, with some vendors and customers parking their vehicles directly where the buses go to pick up passengers in front of Stabroek Market itself.

They completely block the entrance to the route 45 bus park and force the buses to block the carriageway around that area, as they are now forced to join the line on the road itself, versus where the vendors and their customers’ cars blocked the entrance.
This apparently happens in the afternoons/evenings. While I understand that vendors are hustling to make a living also, they cannot block the public transport system on what is probably the most congested area in Guyana.

They are encouraged to see with bus drivers and passengers trying to get where they are going every day; they simply cannot. And it is unacceptable to occupy the area and become a public nuisance on the route 45 bus park, or for that matter any other bus park.
Please use discretion and consideration of others and the public interest when choosing a spot to sell. The basic rule is if you are offending someone where you sell, you shouldn’t be there. Ask the Town Clerk of the Mayor and City Council for advice.

While I am familiar with the touts on this route, I was taken aback by one who was brazen enough to give me a well-articulated script on his opinion of the “system” at the bus park.
The tout detailed that on Mondays through Fridays, touts have to be paid $120 or above for every bus loaded (up from $100), and $200 on Saturdays. The police advised that touts have no right or authority to be paid, so to pay them is to encourage racketeering in its most basic form. Touts are a notorious public nuisance whose existence continues to extract tremendous taxes on both drivers and passengers on a daily basis.

As if this was not enough, he went on to explain that only certain buses could work “after-hours” (whatever that time happened to be) and that I could not. This is a “tout,” someone of no good repute, telling a driver, hustling to balance his family budget, of a bus owned by someone who invested millions into putting it on the road to earn money for his family also, that he was not allowing me to drive in accordance with the laws of Guyana to earn an income.
He “laid out the rules” for me, that he “runs things,” and that he was denying the owner of the bus also an income from his investment.
Later Saturday evening around 8 0’clock while I was in the line in the park, he appeared at the driver side of my bus and reiterated that he meant what he said; that I couldn’t pick up passengers on the park.

Some other bus drivers and some car drivers working with him arranged their vehicles so that I was ultimately forced out of the line. This particular tout is someone police would do well to have a conversation with.

Following on the heels of my run-in with that tout Saturday night, I was greeted by a group of route 45 bus drivers who were apparently in league with the tout, who together orchestrated their buses to keep me from loading passengers.

One particular bus driver who was apparently coordinating the other bus drivers, appeared to have no regard for the police, even after I returned to tell them that I had reported the matter to the traffic Department at Brickdam, and that I preferred not to create problems with the police for them to take away from them earning an income.
He told me that I would have to get off the zone, and continued to direct the other bus drivers to block me from picking up passengers. I would here encourage the police to get deeper down into the racket orchestrated by this driver, and identify and investigate all the touts harassing both bus drivers and passengers on the route 45 bus park.

Yours faithfully,
Craig Sylvester