Why Dookun-Luchoomun Must Allow 3 Credits to Go Through This Time

Because she doesn’t want to make a massive blunder like Nando Bodha did in early 2015 when he scrapped the point system without assessing its effectiveness and replaced it with a more ‘user-friendly’ alternative. As the chart shows road fatalities for the past five years have never been lower than the level they reached in 2014. Unlike in Singapore (in green) where they’ve fallen in every one of those years save 2018 when they increased by two. In fact if we had managed to have their cumulative number of fatalities over that period – which is setting the bar too low given that they have four-and-a-half times more people than us – we would have saved 75 lives between 2015 and 2019. Mr. Bodha has also been working hard to make the traffic Frankenstein meaner and road-users have already noticed that his tram which he calls a metro didn’t solve anything as expected. 

Instead, Ms. Luchoomun should rather want to take 2020 to properly assess the life and academic trajectories of those thousands of citizens that were allowed in Lower Six with three credits for a number of years and to compare them with those of their friends that had a few more credits. This will provide her with the hard facts of the matter, essential ingredients for good decision-making. My hunch is that there will not be a big difference between the two groups. Definitely not large enough to take the kind of risk the Minister is currently assuming. Too much is at stake here. The more so that we may currently have the worst substance abuse problem in our history and our old industrial education system that relies too much on rote-learning is not adequate anymore for a hyper connected world. Besides Cambridge has computed that 70.93% of the most recent SC-takers have passed their exams – these overlapped an election campaign. That’s 13,235, not 5,518, and therefore means that the British examiner has deemed that even 2,129 of the 3,092 who got 1 credit have passed. Government should in fact allow everyone who took these exams to either have a place in Lower Six or in a polytechnic and to move ahead – Jony Ive isn’t going to be there forever.

Ms. Luchoomun will also want to contact the OECD fast so we participate in PISA 2021 and find out if we have improved from the 56th place we clocked in Maths in PISA 2009, the only time we ever participated in this serious survey. As for the 5 credits needed by the PSC they can be kept but arrangements must definitely be made so that SC exams are available every three months or better still online. The blah blah blah about the necessity of shutting out any student without five credits otherwise we’ll end up with a stupid elite will die out rapidly if we consider two facts. The first one is that our savings culture was killed by someone who did very well in his HSC Economics exam and then proceeded to the LSE on a special scholarship when one Kher Jagatsingh was Minister of Education. The other is that a Minister who has a first degree in law wanted to literally sell our clouds because he didn’t like the CWA hotline.

Worried parents should of course get in touch with their MPs and Ms. Luchoomun. Because we don’t have recall elections yet. 

PJ Could Top Grim Table By Year-End

The one for ten years of biggest road fatalities. A word of caution though. In two years – 1995 and 2000 – there was a change of PM so the corresponding numbers don't entirely 'belong' to the PMs listed for them. We allocated the full year to the PM who was in office for more than half of the year.

PJ who is already in the list along with three former PMs – Bérenger's first entry of 144 for 2004 is at the 17th spot – is likely to see his number for 2018 go all the way to the top under three scenarios. The first two are if the last third of this year relative to the first two is like those for 2016 and 2014. The third if we extrapolate the total of 115 deaths reached at the end of August. Another entry might go in the middle of the table if 2018 is more like 2015. Of course all four entries would bump his entry for 2017 – his first year as PM – out of this ranking.

We haven't made good progress in road safety for way too long. And in the last thirteen years the economy-breaking Sithanen flat tax and other indecent fiscal exemptions have ensured that we didn't have enough money to bring road deaths down in a significant and persistent manner. Unlike say Singapore which has seen road fatalities decline in every one of the past ten years except two – here they have been increasing for each of the last three years with Bodha as Minister – reducing them literally by half. The type of tax structure you have determines the number of people who die on roads. So this makes the flat tax akin to a drone assassination programme. And exposes the absurdity of calls to transform the revenues of the dead sugar industry into a guaranteed fixed-deposit.

Lepep Tram Unlikely Biggest Project Ever

Kind of obvious if you have listened carefully to some of the numbers used by Minister Bodha on the same day George Chung deemed that the controversial tram project was basically riskless. As you might not have the figures mentioned six months ago to show the savings over two projects – not exactly the same ones – that were initially promoted by the Labour Party are copied in the table below. 

Given that the road decongestion program (RDP) will spend about Rs3 billion every year for a handful of years and that it will not be the first time nor the last that billions will be wasted to fight the traffic Frankenstein – which is growing bigger thanks to policy-making which is very clumsy – it shouldn't take long before you hear Mr. Bodha's successors announce that the RDP has overtaken the tram project.

The thing is that these unnecessary projects – which constitute the silly response to problems caused by a growth in the car pool which has been left unchecked for way too long – will not only make Mauritius weaker but will also make her uglier. It will make her weaker because as Intel has reminded us a car stays idle over 90% of the time and that hardly makes it a productive investment. Especially when you consider all the other problems of having too many of them. This explains why Singapore has been shrinking her number of cars to levels not seen in eight years. Mind you we're talking here about a country which has nine people to every car and a GDP per capita more than five times ours. Here we have like six people to every car and foolishly think that we can handle more. And that too when heavy road-users already describe several parts of our road network as an overcrowded barracoon.

These projects will definitely make Mauritius less attractive. Just ask any of the 270 trees of the Promenade Roland Armand. That's too heavy a price to pay for things that don't qualify as smart development especially when we know that the Bus Rapid Transit is a much better alternative that will immediately bring much-needed relief to road users. We should also start to act as a middle-income country – and soon a fifty-year old – by protecting our world-famous views. Just like London has been doing for more than a century. Which explains why the Leadenhall Building had to be built like a cheese-grater.

The least Pravind Jugnauth can do is to organise a referendum on such an important national issue. Making good on one electoral pledge will not only deepen our democracy it will also help avoid total political disaster in the next general election.

What Does Singapore Know That We Don't?

Plenty. Let's take their transportation policy for example. Why have they been removing cars from their roads for three straight years? Btw, this has brought back the car pool there to levels not seen in 8 years. Well they are decreasing the number of cars because it is a very inefficient technology. A car is idle more than 90% of the time. So it's pretty unproductive. And it is costly in so many other ways: time wasted in traffic which could be put to better use, burning fuel, pollution, stress and so on. The so on has to include all the space it uses and the other dimensions of traffic that slow you down.

Now when you look at what is being done here it's hard not to conclude that our transportation policy is being crafted in a very amateurish manner. I was totally horrified to hear my friend Georges Chung – an excellent economics teacher at the HSC level but a rather lousy policy-maker – say that one of the assumptions in the transportation planning involving the Metro Express is that the number of cars would be increasing by 5% every year. He obviously hasn't had a good look at the data – he's not the only one for sure – and apprehended the consequences. And it's not the first time. Indeed he has been a huge advocate of 'competitive depreciation' for many many years even suggesting that it is painless. The relevant data seem to tell an entirely different story.

Nando Bodha appears quite overwhelmed too. He scrapped the point system a couple of years ago. Quite a sloppy decision. He's currently spending billions to decongest the road network. Enlisting the help of the Korean Expressway Corporation is not a proof of mindfulness. They couldn't care less to help you saddle yourself with a prehistoric technology as long as they get paid. One that requires the transformation of our sacred Champ de Mars into a dinosaur park. That too after the obliteration of La School.

We're far better off with a bus rapid system (BRT) and freezing duty-free privileges for a couple of years. It's time for Lepep to hit the pause button. And organise a referendum.

Why Scrapping of Point System Looks Sloppy

Because it doesn't seem to be backed by a rigorous analysis of the impact the current system has had on the safety of our roads. Minister Bodha might want to replace it with a "simpler" system of 7-8 serious road offences but I think he is confusing a simplistic system with a simple one. And this could be bad news for all road users. Well, save one.

When people have looked at the effect of such a system elsewhere they found -- like in Spain -- that it saved 618 lives over the first 18 months of its implementation. That's a reduction of 14.5% of the number of road fatalities. Of course experiences will vary across countries which is why we need to know the hard facts of our own. Especially since we have about the same amount of people dying on our roads as Norway. Which has four times more people than us.

The last time Mauritius tried the "simpler" route for something fundamental was in 2006 when one toxic bean-counter -- in the name of robust growth rates -- flattened our tax structure to 15%.