However, ourselves, families, friends and children were traumatised by the illegal and unlawful activities of certain operators and their supporters and instigators who indulged in cutting tyres, pulling out passengers from buses which wished to continue to ply their trade and provide service.

Since 1997 our school children had their education, tests and examinations disrupted by so-called peaceful street protests, rallies, marches and other activities with the stated objective of closing the country down and making it ungovernable.

While we may sympathise with some of the complaints and grievances voiced by the mini bus operators they had several avenues available to them for taking up and possible resolving these grievances.

Instead of this, they arbitrarily decided to withdraw their services, inconvenience us severely and put us and our children in danger.

We call on our government to investigate the possibility of having either a state-own public transportation service or asking the private sector to start one to compete with the mini bus operators.

These operators claim that they are providing us with an essential service and this is true but we the commuters have been providing them with a livelihood, which they may not have been able to obtain elsewhere, they are ungrateful to us.

We sincerely hope that the government will favourably consider our request.
SEBASTIAN GOMES