Garth Rattray
One Sunday, I witnessed a Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) articulated bus perform a very dangerous manoeuvre. I went on to the website in search of someone to complain to, and, to my surprise, the chairman of the board (Douglas Chambers) responded immediately!
I never met Mr Chambers, but his actions convinced me that he was a no-nonsense man on a genuine mission to reform the JUTC and save taxpayers many millions of dollars. Only an extraordinarily patriotic and committed individual could take leave from his accounting firm and earn one dollar a year to stop our municipal transport company from exsanguinating from inefficiency and corruption.
To put it mildly, the JUTC was operating at an unacceptable level of loss. The Government asserts that the company was operating inefficiently, rife with corruption and badly overstaffed. It was rumoured to be laden with People's National Party (PNP) supporters left over from the previous government. Obviously, this government felt the need to streamline and 'clean up' the company. It was clear that several JUTC employees harboured ill will against Mr Chambers, and someone even threatened to kill him. He never gave the threat much credence.
Death threats
However, the police tell me that death threats must always be taken very seriously - especially in our society filled with gun-toting, trigger-happy criminals. By now, everyone of us knows someone that has been killed by the gun. It doesn't take much for stupid and spineless gunmen to use their index finger and apply 0.9 Kg of pressure to a trigger and blow away your life or my life. Their warped minds can't see that killing a fellow human being - except in self-defence or in defence of another innocent life - is sinful, despicable and cowardly.
When a trigger is squeezed, it travels a very short path until it comes to a certain critical millimetre. At that point, the hammer is released and it either strikes the middle section of a round directly, or strikes a pin that in turn, strikes the round. This ignites an explosive charge that expels a warhead with incredible force and sends it flying out of the barrel of the firearm. If the warhead comes into contact with a body, it tears and burns its way through living tissue and causes variable damage or death.
Simple act
I find it astounding that the simple act of squeezing a trigger can cause so much destruction, death, pain, physical and emotional suffering, loss of freedom, economic backlash, downturn in tourist visitors and send a plume of fear, hopelessness and depression a mile high over an entire island. Decent, hard-working Jamaicans cannot go on living one millimetre from death.
Mr Chambers was murdered for stepping on the wrong toes while trying to make our premier municipal transport company efficient and viable. Whoever sanctioned his murder meant to send a clear message of intimidation to all decent and patriotic Jamaicans. It also sent the message that in spite of declarations to the contrary, it appears as if politics still figures in criminal acts. The Jamaica Observer repeatedly posited that the killing stemmed mostly from the redundancy exercise and that the killers probably had some affiliation with the PNP.
Whether that theory is correct or not, I hope that by the time this is printed, our politicians would have encouraged their grass-roots supporters to ferret out those murderers. I also hope that those citizens with information will speak to the appropriate authorities in the name of justice and not allow yet another victim to die in vain.
Dr Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice; email, garthrattray@gmail.com; for feedback, columns@gleanerjm.com
