So it’s now Ashok Subron’s fault that CNT employees can’t get a raise! Amazing the drivel politicians come out with sometimes. After government had to backtrack on the announced bus fare rise – in typical Bachoo fashion – it was announced that the decision to fleece the commuter was “suspended”.

Suspended, because government couldn’t reach an agreement with bus workers. A situation that greatly “saddened” the Labour minister Shakeel Mohamed because it meant that bus workers wouldn’t be getting their pay raise as from the end of August because the bad trade unionist had refused to sign the agreement.

Can we perhaps remind the Labour minister that if it weren’t for Subron and co, the workers’ demands would have remained unheeded? That he, himself, would have continued to live in blissful ignorance of the bus workers’ depressing work conditions? You do remember, don’t you how Shakeel Mohamed recently announced – as if he had just made an earth shattering discovery – that a bus driver still earned Rs10,000 a month after 33 years in service?

Ok so let’s go back to Anil Bachoo and his very innovative way of funding a pay rise for the workers. It must be the very first time that those who are supposed to benefit from a raise in bus fare – i.e, the bus companies – say they don’t want it! And why don’t they want the price of the bus ticket to go up? Because it’s not good for business, because the commuter, fed up with the poor standard of service and of security aboard our prototype buses, will find other – cheaper if not safer – ways to travel.

And yet, Anil Bachoo who has spent years at the ministry responsible for transport, doesn’t know this?

Worse, he doesn’t see anything wrong in making the commuter pay for each and everyone of his decisions. The bus companies are saying it’s not the price of the bus fare that needs to go up but the quantum of the compensation government pays (with our money, need we remind them?) for school children as well as the elderly who travel on the buses free of charge. The argument is actually rather logical; government is paying them a sum of money that is representative of the number of people who were travelling free of charge in 2005. Eight years later, that number must have increased rather substantially. They say, the quantum of compensation for free transport is what needs to be reviewed.

Bachoo’s reply to this was, “erm well, this money also comes out of public funds”. Damn right it does. But they didn’t think of that in 2005 when the “great gift” of free transport was granted to those who had asked for nothing, did they?

Now that public fi nances are stretched thin thanks in part to innumerable largesse – and waste – made in our name, they try to impose a rise in the bus fare on commuters who have no say in anything.

If that’s not shameful, I don’t know what is!