The dawn of a new school term has heightened concerns over transportation in Halls Delight, a rugged rural St Andrew community where deplorable roads have caused many bus and taxi operators to withdraw their services.

“A lot of buses were up here, but with the condition of the road them mash up and everybody just gone,” 61-year-old Carol Robinson told the Jamaica Observer last week.

“We have one good Samaritan leave still, and that’s brother Basy Brown… but he’s old. He’s getting up there [in age] so you know he can’t manage again, so him go down one time. Sometimes he will go down Monday, Friday, and Saturday or sometimes just Friday and Saturday,” she said.

“But with so many a them gone now, how are we going to manage September?” she asked.

The development, Robinson said, has significantly reduced transportation options for students, some of whom, in the previous school term, had to walk from Halls Delight to Mavis Bank.

That walk, according to Google Maps, is about two hours. Robinson is fearing that that same fate will meet students next month when the new academic year opens.

“When they get to school I don’t see how they learn because by the time them reach school them tired, and to come back in the night them tired same way. When them come home, as them get a five-hour sleep, them back again. It rough, but they will have to do it,” she said, her face a mask of sadness.

Robinson said that the only other mode of transportation for residents is bike taxis which are more expensive.

“For the children, they would pay $500 or sometimes $400 on the taxi or bus that some people used to run up here and go Papine, but with the bike taxi we pay $600 to go down to Mavis Bank and a next $300 to go to Papine and we nuh reach town (downtown Kingston) yet,” she said.

“School lunch not in that either, and they sell lunch for $600 and is only the lunch alone in the little box…the juice not it,” she shared.

Robinson said she has three grandchildren and sometimes it costs her $5,000 or more daily to get them to school and back, which is financially draining.

“It rough. I have to just try and manage, but they not going [school] everyday. They go only if we have it. Sometimes them father go foreign and send a little money and then we send them,” she told the Sunday Observer.

A 17-year-old student of Dunoon Technical High School, recalling his experience with transportation during the last school year, said that some days he could not get to school because there was no transportation available. He explained that he would often wake up by 3:00 am to get to school and during that time transportation is hard to get.

“Sometimes you have to call a bike taxi all five o’clock in the morning and beg them to carry you to school and not everybody is going to want to wake up so early to carry you and come back,” he shared.

“If I leave any later than that, I am late for school; sometimes about 11:00 am I can get a ride if somebody is going down and by that time is lunchtime, so it doesn’t make any sense,” he told the Sunday Observer.

He said that on the occasions that he did manage to find transportation, he sometimes paid $2,000 each day to and from school.

“Fare to go school is $800 to $1,000 from here to Mavis Bank on the bike taxi, and the taxi from Mavis Bank to Papine charge $250 going down and sometimes if it’s late at night, they charge more. Then from Papine to school is $150,” he explained, adding that he pays the same amount to get back home.

“My mother always find it. Even if is her last she make it happen, but if we had better roads then maybe more buses would come up here and then it would be cheaper,” he reasoned.

A bike taxi operator who gave his name as Cheeno said he has been providing the service for more than two years. He said the condition of the road and the number of passengers they can carry play a big role in the fares.

“Now, when the time dry and the road have whole heap a lose dirt, we have to take like all a 30 minutes from up here go Mavis Bank or sometimes more than that; [it] depends on the weight of the person,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“To go down you have to use your brakes a lot, but to go up you have to balance with the weight and the potholes; it rough,” said Cheeno, who pointed out that frequent trips result in damage to his and his colleagues’ motorcycles.

“We normally have to service the bike them like every Sunday, because we don’t normally work on Sundays. Sometimes when you service you just oil up certain things or put them back in place, depending on what got damaged. The bearings now, a just $500 for a single one. With the bike you know two work a front and three round a the back, so that’s $1,500 plus the cost to repair anything else,” he said.

Voicing frustration at the deplorable state of the road, Cheeno said it is full time that it is repaired properly.

“It fix a few times, but not the way everybody want it to fix with [asphalt]. Them just push off the dirt with the tractor and that’s it. We want them to [asphalt] it,” he demanded.

His annoyance was echoed by Hall’s Delight Primary School Principal Denise Dunchie, who said the disgraceful condition of the road will no doubt impact the operations of school in September.

“We have teachers who come as far as from St Elizabeth and Spanish Town. They generally try to get a little place to stay and rent in the area here, but with water problem, transportation problem, and all of that, as soon as they get some place else they are gone, so we have rapid turnover,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“If the teachers want to go somewhere, if they just want to go to the bank, they have to take the entire day and when a teacher is absent we just have to try to fit in,” Dunchie said.

The principal said that currently the school has enough teachers to start the new school term, but she cannot be 100 per cent certain they will remain for the duration of the academic year.

She said that the school used to have a cottage where teachers could stay during the week but that was destroyed during the passage of Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 and has not been replaced.

Although she has little hope that the road situation will be resolved soon, the principal appealed to the Ministry of Education to provide another cottage for the school.

“If we could get somewhere like a cottage or somewhere the teachers can stay when they come that would be good. Even the secretary travels from outside, so if it’s even somewhere we can stay during the week and go home on the weekends I think that could help in keeping our teachers when we get them,” Dunchie said.

A resident, who request anonymity, said the situation is worse when it rains.

“When rain fall it even more difficult because nothing is not being done to the road. It’s just maybe people in the community who may try do some little digging up and do the drain; by the time rain come everything gone again and we have to start all over,” she said.

“I think they can do much better and I don’t even think that they are trying to do anything to the road up here because there was a breakaway up here and it was people in the community who had to come together and try and put the road back together, and up to now I don’t see the MP (Member of Parliament). I don’t see anybody a come do no work on the road,” she added.

“I think that if we have road more people will buy vehicles and all of that because most of the bus man them and people with transportation complain that because of the road they don’t want to carry any passenger because they have to be buying [spare] parts. So I think they can put more effort into the road,” she stated.