The legitimacy or otherwise of the adjusted toll rates recently announced for the Berbice Bridge aside, there are, as every rational thinking person would agree, other considerations which are at least of comparable importance.
It would, for example, be foolhardy to cast aside the threat of bankruptcy argument which the Berbice Bridge Company is making in seeming defence of the new proposed toll or for that matter the relevance of a realistic correlation between the toll charged for use of the bridge and the cost of maintenance and repairs. The equally plain truth is, of course, that other difficult implications attend the proposed hike, not least the plain and irrefutable truth that in most instances, what is being proposed is likely to be beyond the reach of the bridge users.
It strains credulity to believe that whatever justification the Board may have for the new rates, they would not have anticipated that what they are proposing would be unaffordable and that it would inevitably have to face a robust official and popular ‘pushback’ given the sheer extent of the proposed increase. We are, on account of those numbers, faced with the options of (a) imposing the increases and having to confront problems that are likely to include significant loss of income, greatly increased costs of goods and services and almost certainly considerable public protest with all of its political and other implications or (b) having government (as it says it will) step in to veto the intended toll hikes,
The sheer extent of the percentage increase in the respective tolls raises the issue as to whether this may not have been the opening gambit in an attempt at negotiation with government with regard to arriving at just where the level of the toll would be. Perhaps the Bridge Board might even have anticipated some sort of subsidy to enable the return to the shareholders to approach at least what it would be if the toll were implemented. Accordingly, it is not unreasonable to assume that prior to the envisaged implementation date for a new toll structure the ‘ball game’ would have changed considerably and we will be placed in a zone of greater reasonableness and outside of the realm of the pseudo-brinkmanship that now obtains.
Without prejudice to the rationale for arrival at the Bridge Board’s numbers, they are, all things considered, a mind-numbing imposition which appears to take no account of the circumstances of the bridge users in the context of the ability of many if not most of them to pay. The reality is that the imposition of a level of toll even close to the existing ‘numbers’ would impose a level of hardship and inconvenience and social backlash that would, in the eyes of those who now use it, reduce the importance of what, doubtless, is a critical piece of developmental infrastructure.
If all of this might be construed in some quarters as reflective of an absence of mindfulness of the well-being of the Berbice Bridge Company Inc. that is hardly the case. It is simply a matter of one of those instances where hard, cold reality demands that a generous dose in realism be infused into the situation. Insofar as the extent of the current proposed toll is concerned (again all things considered) it is wildly unrealistic.
