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I was waiting to see if one of our young journalists or one of the bus operators would bring up the issue that we have imported second hand buses for public transportation before. This happened in the 1990s, and it became a very controversial issue. I am referring to the so-called Dino buses, which were imported into Jamaica. This is a matter that I took up when I was president of the Citizens' Initiative Organization.
I remember getting a call one night from a transport operator who was in tears. He had bought a bus using a bank loan through a government facility called the San Jose Accord. He was a part of the Dino Action Group. These refurbished buses were imported from Mexico and sold to independent bus operators.
I became involved with the negotiations with the Dino Action Group, the government, and the Dino company in Mexico. Many meetings were held in Kingston and also in Manchester. On one trip, I nearly lost my life when the tyre of the car I was in came off.
To cut a long story short, members of the Dino Action Group were told that members of the Dino Company would not come to Jamaica. They abandoned the idea because they were advised by persons in Jamaica that they could end up losing their lives. The company was told that a group of us would go to Mexico. We got word that we should not go because we could end up losing our lives in Mexico.
Nobody's life was at risk. The Dino company did not sell buses to Jamaica. It is a gentleman who had Jamaican connections who rebuilt some abandoned Dino buses and sold them to Jamaica. The buses did not last long. The operators were unable to service their loans because the buses ended up on the scrap heap.
The story is much longer, but I will end by saying that it did not take long for the transport operators to get back their over JAD70 million dollars. That was plenty of money at the time. It was now known that the Dino Action Group and I knew the full story.
The interesting thing is that the operators were so glad to get back their money that they neither said thanks, nor did they donate any of the funds as promised to the Citizens' Initiative Organization. I became despondent, and I abandoned this national citizens group, even though it was having a major positive impact nationally.
I subsequently went back into broadcasting and continued to do my lobby work, hosting the programme 'At Your Service'. Before that, I worked on a contractual basis at the now-defunct Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC). The lesson learned was that corruption is all around, and people are very ungrateful.
There is far more to this story. I hope a media house will assign persons to take a look at how our transportation sector has deteriorated to the point where it has become dysfunctional. Things are looking up, so we must support the transportation sector, whether we support the PNP or the JLP. A fi wi bus dem and a fi wi country wey need a good transportation sector.
Other Readings
About the Citizens' Initiative Organizatio - Dennis Obrien Chang
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