THE EDITOR: The usual and the loudest voices have automatically opposed the fuel price increases declared by the Minister of Finance. The most obvious omission in their completely predictable, shallow comments has been, of course, any reference to the Public Transport Service Corporation.

Not only have none of our spokesmen for the working class and poor mentioned the wretched failure that is state-sponsored public transport, but these people all seem to be advocating the maintenance of transportation as it is currently endured and inflicted upon the population.

If a study were conducted to sample occupants of vehicles in TT for the purpose of finding out how many road users are on self-described essential journeys and how many are on elective outings, it will no doubt reveal that many people spend hours of their lives in vehicles because they have nothing better to do.

The correspondent of a daily newspaper interviewed customers at a petrol station on fuel price increases and was told, "You can't take your children or grandchildren how you want now, you have to limit where you go and how you go." Another customer said, "We will have to cut back on a lot of drives we used to make, especially liming."

The Minister of Finance missed an opportunity. When he announced the fuel price increases he should have had the covid19 celebrities standing at his side (or possibly behind him.) Those people whose faces we know so well from seeing them day after pandemic day telling us the minutiae of the TT pandemic could have explained the link between the increase in fuel prices and the nation's health.

An opportunity slipped through the fingers of the Ministry of Health team to point out that the oft-referred-to need to change our unhealthy lifestyles has been handed to us. We can all walk more, sit for fewer hours in stressful, pointless traffic feeling guilty about our carbon footprints as we spew spent hydrocarbons into the atmosphere while toxic chemicals are left from our tyres to wash off the tarmac into our streams and soil.

TT can be a better, healthier place for people and the environment as we rely less on motor vehicle transportation and take responsibility for our health in response to the fuel price increases.

A BLADE

Mason Hall

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