I write about something that I have been asked to write about and that is the public transport system here on Grand Cayman, or as it is sometimes called, the mini bus system.
This is something I personally know about, being one of the first drivers to operate a public mini bus on Grand Cayman. I started out with a 15-seater bus after seeing a great need for this type of system here in Cayman.
I can remember the visit I made to Jamaica in the late 70s and saw the mini bus working there and said to myself, I would operate this type of system in Cayman for all I saw there at the time was Mr. Thomas Seymour and a man called Bo-Bo with two old school type buses carrying the local people only at that time to the West Bay area.
I jumped in and started carrying people east and west mostly early in the morning and late in the evening and from the supermarket at Kirk Plaza at that time.
The rest of my day was spent carrying tourists from the cruise ship to hotels and form hotels to the airport. It has been some years now since I gave up driving the mini bus and have watched as it has gone through some changes with ex-policemen as overlords controlling it like some Mafia in control of their gang members and the drivers of the mini buses being mostly from Jamaica. I still do not understand why we cannot have Caymanians driving our own public transport system. Instead we have people here on permit driving the buses that most of them belong to Jamaicans here on Cayman, getting them permits to drive buses year after year. Many of the owners of the buses have up to six buses on the road with up to five permits approved by the Public Transport Board. That is not right where there are so many Caymanian men and women that have applied for public transports licences and have been turned down. Why don’t we give our own Caymanians a chance to be of service to our country? I did not start the mini bus service for ex-policemen that have been kicked off the force to drive up and down all day giving people a hard time.
We as Caymanians should be more involved in our public transport service and we must take another look at all this money government is pouring into this area, the public transport system, these ex-police and others that are on the board of the public transport system and services.
Now I bet you will never find up until this day in Jamaica where their public transport system approves a Caymanian to operate any kind of bus service in Jamaica. As one Jamaican driver said to me, ‘What do you want to see how fast he would be killed?’
I am now asking the Caymanians that want to have a public transport bus to go and apply and am asking the public transport board to approve Caymanians to be owners and drivers and send these permit bus drivers home. We have our own Caymanians in need of those positions and jobs. We are sick and tired of our own government turning a blind eye to these very important areas of employment for our people.
The public transport system was created for Caymanians; not Jamaicans or anyone else. So as I stated, take another look at all these permit holders that drive public buses here on Cayman and these ex-policemen in the public transport system and the role they play. Replace them with younger Caymanians that need the jobs. While we are at it, do the same in the taxi service.
Remember there are our own people here on our Island that are hungry for these jobs. A message from the first mini bus public transport driver and owner: No more permits for Jamaican mini bus drivers. Hire our own Caymanians.
We need more of our own people with buses driving here on Cayman in all the transportation. Stop keeping Caymanians down. We are a nice people but we can become nasty just like the rest of the world when pushed too hard.
Emile S. Levy
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I have always wondered why these Mini-bus full with passengers could operate with such little regard for public safety. With the many violations I see them involved with each day, such as speeding, failing to give way and outright recklessness they are rarely seen pulled over by the police.. Further the complaints of selective service to their designated travel route are never ending. I once registered a complaint on behalf of a regular user of the GT to NS route, that the driver was turning around at Bodden Town and not completing their route to North Side, that the person would have to get off the bus and hitch-hike the rest of the way to work. The remedy I received from the transport coordinator was to tell the person not to get off the bus the next time. I am not sure who should or should not be operators, but I do know they should be supervised and regulated. It also go to reason that the highly competitive tactics used on the dysfunctional traffic ways in Jamaica has no place in Cayman..