Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The trans­porta­tion is­sue af­fect­ing the ed­u­ca­tion of some stu­dents liv­ing in the vil­lage of Bras­so Seco is a se­ri­ous one, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ari­ma, and Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ad­mit­ted.

Re­spond­ing to the For­got­ten Com­mu­ni­ties fea­ture on Bras­so Seco in Mon­day’s Guardian, in which res­i­dents said some stu­dents dropped out of school or missed many days be­cause of an ab­sence of pub­lic trans­porta­tion, Beck­les said she’s been pe­ti­tion­ing since ear­ly 2022 to have ser­vice re­sumed.

“This is a very, very se­ri­ous is­sue for me, and the min­is­ter (ed­u­ca­tion) has re­spond­ed. Of course, it’s crit­i­cal be­cause of the long dis­tances that peo­ple have to trav­el. Of course, there are some is­sues. There is the is­sue of roads.

“You can see that there’s work be­ing done….They’ve done quite a lot of work in the Blan­chisseuse area and in some oth­er ar­eas, the drainage is crit­i­cal. De­pend­ing on what side you’re com­ing from, you can see that work is be­ing done, but there’s still a lot of work to be done,” Beck­les told Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day.

In a let­ter writ­ten to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly in Oc­to­ber 2022, Beck­les, in her ca­pac­i­ty as Ari­ma MP, wrote that “There is no pub­lic trans­porta­tion in this area (Bras­so Seco) and there are some chil­dren ei­ther have to re­side away from their par­ents and live in Ari­ma or sim­ply can­not at­tend school as has been the case since the pan­dem­ic.

“Min­is­ter, I plead on be­half of my con­stituents to in­ves­ti­gate this mat­ter as my con­stituents sim­ply can­not af­ford to pay for pri­vate cars to take their chil­dren to school and even if they could they are non-ex­is­tent in some cas­es and at oth­er times ir­reg­u­lar.”

Three days lat­er, the ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt via let­ter and said the min­istry will make ef­forts to as­sist.

Beck­les lat­er wrote to the min­istry to make a sim­i­lar ap­peal for stu­dents of La Fil­lette Vil­lage in Blan­chisseuse as well.

“This ser­vice would fa­cil­i­tate the time­ly trans­porta­tion of 15-20 stu­dents, who are de­pen­dent on the maxi-taxi ser­vice but have been left with­out it since the re­open­ing of school af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic lock-down end­ed.

“In the ab­sence of the round trip maxi-taxi ser­vice be­tween La Fil­lette Vil­lage and Port-of-Spain, stu­dents must re­ly on pri­vate trans­porta­tion, which is not re­li­able and has re­sult­ed in chil­dren reach­ing to school late and re­turn­ing home even lat­er. I would be grate­ful for your good of­fice as­sis­tance and in­flu­ence to put in place arrange­ments that would fa­cil­i­tate the re­sus­ci­ta­tion of the round trip maxi ser­vice from La Fil­lette Vil­lage to Port-of-Spain on be­half of the stu­dents of my con­stituen­cy,” she wrote.

In Jan­u­ary, via let­ter, Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly re­spond­ed to the re­quests for a re­sump­tion of bus ser­vices in the area by say­ing that the min­istry’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions with Pub­lic Trans­porta­tion Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) in­di­cat­ed that the is­sue ‘may have arisen ow­ing to a lack of con­ces­sion­aires.’

In late May, vice chair­man of PTSC Robin Ram­per­sad said the cor­po­ra­tion does not have enough bus­es to ser­vice all routes and was op­er­at­ing on 79 out of 163 routes around the coun­try.

He said, how­ev­er, that PTSC was in the process of ac­quir­ing new bus­es.

In Mon­day’s For­got­ten Com­mu­ni­ties piece, Bras­so res­i­dents com­plained that PTSC ser­vice and the school maxi taxi ser­vice to the area stopped years ago, leav­ing stu­dents and res­i­dents with­out ac­cess to pub­lic trans­port. They claimed the poor con­di­tion of the Paria Morne Bleu Road made it very dif­fi­cult for large ve­hi­cles to tra­verse.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with one of the af­fect­ed stu­dents, a 15-year-old. He ad­mit­ted that he missed sev­er­al days of school over the last cou­ple of years be­cause of the is­sue.

“It’s re­al­ly hard to get trans­port to out there. A $100 every day. It had a maxi that used to come up, but it stopped. That maxi stopped com­ing up here long be­fore COVID. I have to miss school some days be­cause of the cost. Yeah, I does take a hus­tle and work…I does go to school, but I miss it be­cause of the trans­port is­sue.

“As school opens back, I’ll be go­ing. But it’s once in a while when things get tight, I don’t go. It have oth­er chil­dren too. Some­times it’s six of us in a car go­ing out. If you don’t get trans­port, you go back home. You know how much time I wait, and I can’t get any­thing and I had to go back home,” the stu­dent shared.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to get an up­date from Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly on the is­sue.

Mean­while, the PTSC’s mar­ket­ing de­part­ment said it will pro­vide a state­ment on the is­sue as soon as pos­si­ble.