Dear Editor

I laughed when I read the headline for Wednesday stating that the traffic wardens’ contracts were not renewed. In my opinion this group served no real purpose on the roads.

Time after time I have seen them just liming around town, not even paying attention to the congested traffic. Even with these wardens on the road and policemen with ticket books, people still persist in parking badly and double-parking.

One day I stood outside my office and watched as cars were double-parked on both sides of the road, leaving regular traffic to slowly navigate. I traverse Redcliffe Street regularly and it seems to be the road with the most illegal parking.

Some, including a van from a government department, feather park when the space is too small to parallel park.

So my concern is, if these things are done when there are traffic policemen and traffic wardens on the road, what will happen now?

As for the policemen, their presence is almost non-existent. When they do get the opportunity to exercise their power and give a ticket, they slowly take out the book and start walking around the car as if they forget where the license plate is. Then they start looking around as if they are waiting on the driver. They act reluctant to give a ticket!

I have seen that when a person approaches them even after the ticket is written, they decide not to give it to them. My understanding was that you write up a ticket as swiftly as possible and stick it on the car no matter who the person is — friend or foe, civilian or politician.

But what am I saying? After all, if a police officer can illegally park on the yellow lines and go and do his business, I should expect all others to be as unprofessional and compromising.

Nevertheless, I do hope that the entire traffic monitoring system will be vastly improved in Antigua. Let’s for once try to get some real law and order in our country.