Panday knocks carpooling plan

Panday knocked Government’s proposed policy of carpooling and restrictions on foreign used vehicles, saying it was wrong to deny people the right to own a car. He added that he did not believe cutting down on the number of cars would solve traffic congestion.

He said Government needed to introduce a mass transit system. This would allow people to move freely (using public transport) while leaving their cars at home, if they wished. He recalled it was the UNC which broke the monopoly of “those people who called themselves manufacturers — the assembly industry,” by deregulating the industry and allowing foreign-used vehicles to enter the country.

This he said, made cars affordable for many in the lower income groups. “I will not support a programme that will deny the poor and the lower middle-class the luxury of having a car,” he said.

Panday said people seemed to have forgotten the days when people had to pay $5,000 just to get on a waiting list for a car.

Asked what could be done in this five-year period while people waited for the construction of the mass transit rail system, Panday said in the interim people should get rid of the PNM. “It will ease up our frustration, because at last we would know that something would be done to improve the situation (under the UNC Government),” he said.

Panday said one of the causes of the traffic woes was bad planning. He said the one thing that Government could do is decentralise the services offered by the Central Government. “People have to come into Port-of-Spain for everything,” he said, noting that decentralising bureaucratic services would remove the necessity of people crowding the capital for basic administrative services. President of the Automotive Dealers Association, (which comprises of new vehicle dealers) Philip Knaggs, said many foreign-used vehicles imported into Trinidad and Tobago were noticeably old.

“There are questions of the road-worthiness of these vehicles and to make matters worse, we believe that there is not adequate dealer support for these vehicles,” he said.