OPPOSITION spokesman on education Senator Damion Crawford has predicted that if the Government rolls out the planned rural school bus programme before Jamaicans vote in the next general election the backlash would be painful for the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

“If the JLP waits [to go to the polls] until school starts I am sure they will lose the election, because everybody will realise that this is madness,” Crawford told journalists during an education policy briefing in the Corporate Area on Thursday.

Crawford, the People’s National Party’s (PNP) caretaker for St Catherine North Western, has been a vocal critic of the Government’s planned rural school bus programme, and during the media briefing he declared that while the Opposition is not opposed to an effective transportation system for children in rural Jamaica, what is now proposed by Transport Minister Daryl Vaz is impractical.

“The [units in the] school bus system, at any given time, can carry 48 [children] so the others will have to take something else. So if you should look, for example, at the Linstead to Spanish Town route — which is an established route that is currently being operated because of the train being out of service — it has a bus that leaves at 6:00 [am] and it returns at 8:30 [am], so the bus can only do one trip within the open period of school because you must reach by 8:00.

“So that bus, if there is 400 students in Linstead at any point, that bus can take 48, leaving 352, so that 352 will have to take the same taxis,” said Crawford as he argued that the 400 students will be forced to fight each other to get into the 48 seats.

According to Crawford, the claim by Vaz that the rural schools bus system will address the problem of students battling to get into taxis, which are often unsafe, is nothing but a distraction.

“This is a red herring that the minister of transport has thrown out there. In 2015 JUTC (Jamaica Urban Transit Company) transported 100,000 children; currently JUTC transports 5,500 children because the bus numbers have moved from over 400 to under 300.

“It means, therefore, that under this minister he has forced 95,000 more children to take a taxi, just because of JUTC incompetence. So if it is that this taxi is so much of a risk he would be in breach by putting greater risk on them,” declared Crawford.

The PNP has promised that if it forms the next Government it will engage private bus and taxi operators to roll out a transportation subsidy for students in areas not served by the JUTC.

Dubbed the Rural Initiative for Delivering Education (RIDE) programme, the PNP has said this will assist rural students with their weekly public transportation costs.

On Thursday Crawford defended the PNP’s proposal as he argued that a number of schools in rural Jamaica already have contracts with private transport operators to move their students.

According to Crawford, the private operators are vetted and approved by the schools.

“Yes, a system that totally separates children from adults is the best system that we can have but that system would need 30 times the buses that they have bought,” he said.

“What we have [proposed] is way better because what we have can go into the hinterlands, what we have can go into the areas with six people and seven people and take them out — a 50-seater bus can’t do that,” Crawford said, despite an indication from Vaz that the Government has made provisions for students in deep-rural communities.

“To address the unique needs of hinterland areas, buses of varying sizes, including smaller vehicles, were procured to navigate challenging terrains and reach remote communities,” Vaz said in an update to the media last month.

At that time Vaz announced that in the first phase of the programme 100 buses will service 100 routes across rural Jamaica, with 10 buses reserved as substitutes to ensure service continuity during maintenance or repairs.

But Crawford on Thursday argued that Vaz has not released the routes for the school buses because the Government does not want a full examination of its plan.

“Tell us the routes so that we can analyse their effectiveness and we can see how much children will not benefit. To this point we have only heard that there is 100 routes, but why are the routes not identified so that we can see, ‘This place don’t get nutten, that place don’t get nutten…,’ ” said Crawford.

He added: “The vast majority, up to 80 per cent [of students], will not benefit, cannot benefit because of the number of buses. So yes, if we can separate children from adults would be the best case, and if PNP should get that best case we would have used the same $1.4 billion and bought 2026 Toyota Coasters… instead of 15-year-old imported buses that you buy for $300 million and retrofit for $1.1 billion.

“I don’t think this was a transportation plan, this was a corruption plan that is coming out more and more as we speak,” charged Crawford.

Dameon Simpson (left), Julian Spencer (centre) and Hopeton Peterkin, who are members of a team retrofitting school buses, are seen installing the passenger door on the left-hand side of this bus at the Jamaica Urban Transit Company depot on Lyndhurst Road, St Andrew, recently. (Photo: Joseph Wellington)