Paul Chong Leung: “We should take a second look at Metro Express”

The Metro Express project continues to be the subject of heated debates despite getting the green light. MP Roshi Bhadain of the Reform Party threatens to resign from parliament over the issue, which would result in a by-election. Consumer protection champion Jayen Chellum protested by shaving his head in front of Parliament House. Former Ambassador, Minister and Attorney General, Paul Chong Leung sent us his views on the project.

The Alliance Lepep government is busy trying to implement the Metro Express (ME) project after having spent two and a half years doing nothing good but spending their time bickering among themselves. Two of the ministers called each other names belonging to two of the fiercest dog races. They were also very busy dealing with the aftermath of their own doing with the mega-scandal following the expropriation and dismemberment of BAI and Bramer Bank.

With the Metro Express (ME) having to undergo the scrutiny of the battery of regulations and other safeguards established over the years to prevent improper practices, the government has found nothing better than to blame these regulations, safeguards and the Central Procurement Board after officially decreeing that the metro project should be exempt from an Environment Clearance Certificate. Inhabitants of towns through which the Metro Express will run, God forbid, will have to endure and suffer all the ills and ugly consequences that it will surely cause.

It is not a hole that the Alliance Lepep government is digging but a crater of gigantic proportions – be they economic, environmental, financial, political, and social. They don’t realise that the vehicular traffic in those towns is bound to become well nigh impossible. At the end of the day, those responsible for all the hell that the ME is going to raise, will pack up and go. But the humble ‘Virer Mams’ who have since become ‘Plorer Mams’ will have to endure and suffer the hellish life in the aforementioned towns.

Vehicular Traffic

Regarding vehicular traffic in those towns, whether congestion will disappear to be replaced by a complete standstill in mornings and afternoons, we have it that one metro carriage will pass through every three minutes during peak hours, according to certain reports. The ME is proposed as a solution to congestion. It won’t cut it, and instead, traffic will come to a standstill. Stopping for an average of one minute at each of the planned 19 stations, it is claimed the whole journey from Curepipe to Port Louis will last only 21 minutes. This is way off the mark.

The stretch of road known as the sugar road from Curepipe Road to Vacoas and through the Jumbo round-about will no more be a road. This stretch of railway track was converted to a road following the scrapping of the railway network post-Independence. What would happen to the heavy road traffic built on it over the years? Will the metro run overhead on this part? The same remarks apply to the Quatre Bornes and Belle Rose stretch; the town will be divided into two parts, the south portion where La Louise is to be found and the northern part. The same applies to the Belle Rose to Rose Hill stretch, where the Arab Town market will have to disappear.

Can we imagine the situation that will prevail in these town centres? In 2015, all these towns fell under the control of the Alliance Lepep. None of these municipalities were allowed to express their views. None of them asked to be either. They dutifully obeyed the orders from above. 

This is the situation we have reached as far as road traffic is concerned in the centres of our most important and busy towns, faced with an ever increasing number of vehicles and daft and dumb people leading both local and central administrations. These coming from an ever increasing number of family members at the helm be they sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, fathers, in-laws, brothers and sisters, and to crown it all mistresses we are being told. There is, so far, one notable exception, no one has thought of appointing their mother to one of these juicy posts. 

They have an army of advisors or senior advisors to all of them and at the PMO motley of different categories, with varying levels of education or social and ethical acceptability with one of them who should never have been there in the first place. Special mention here for the Special Advisor who succeeded in averting the Heritage City catastrophe on the government, sold as a glory deed of the previous PM. Let’s not forget taxpayers still had to fork out Rs 56 million. This Advisor succeeded in saving Port Louis from gloom. Whilst this peers were being fatly remunerated along with the perks, he was only taking home a meagre Rs 500,000 pcm, after relinquishing remunerations of Rs 1 million pcm in African countries.

If the government goes ahead with the Metro Express despite all good sense, it is going to cost us billions of rupees over several decades, with no end in sight apart from its dire consequences. The number of vehicles on our roads, excluding two-wheelers, stood at 294,456 in 2015 and is estimated to reach 495,000 by 2025! Vehicular traffic already grounds to a crawl during peak hours and with the ME, it will drive to a stand-still.

Readers of a daily on 22nd of May 2017 were flabbergasted to read therein Mr Tengur in the name of his association having avidly gobbled what the sponsors of the ME have to say on the duration of the travel from Curepipe to Port Louis, namely some 30 to 40 minutes. 

With 19 stations to serve, the metro cannot take less than one minute at each stop, leaving at the very most 21 minutes for actual travel over the 26 km journey. Its maximum speed being 80 kph, the average speed cannot exceed 40 kph. Allowances must be made for the 19 actual stops, along with related deceleration and acceleration. Thus, the duration cannot be less than 60 to 75 minutes.

It is still time to take a second look at the metro project, although this time it is not going to cost Rs 56 million but ten or manifold that amount. But the overall cost and the Rs 1 billion incurred to put a stop to Metro Express will pale in comparison when hell will be let loose. This is what is in store for us. But unfortunately, this decision to go at full and at a breakneck speed to implement come what may this hastily taken decision will not be reversed. 

This Alliance Lepep government does not realise they have put the spanner or their hands in the works and are going headlong to put their whole body in the boiling crater – lock, stock and barrel!

Paul Chong Leung, Former Attorney General

Ex-Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China