KIGALI - A regional bus transport company, Regional Coaches, has become a conduit for smuggled goods, officials have charged.

It has been discovered that traders connived with the bus operators to transport smuggled goods from Rwanda into other East African countries.

Information availed from Kigali Prosecution Office on Monday indicated that one of the company’s buses, registered KAU 663 G, was impounded with smuggled electrical cables last week.

John Bosco Mutangana, the Prosecution Spokesman, said they seized electrical cables on the bus last Tuesday.

The cables are suspected to have been stolen from Electrogaz, power and water utility. The bus was stopped at Katuna border and returned to Kigali, and is now parked at the Prosecution offices in Kimihurura.

Mutangana said the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is helping Prosecution in investigating whether bus owners or workers had prior knowledge about the cables. Electrical cables are on high demand in other regional countries and there is a lot of smuggling, officials said. 

Smuggling electrical cables has lately been rampant in Rwanda.

In the recent past, police impounded a container full of electrical cables belonging to an Asian trader at Katuna border and detained him.

On June 7, 2005, thirty passengers aboard a Regional Coach bus (Reg. no.UAE 804Y) perished in a fatal accident at Kyonyo, five kilometers away from the Uganda - Rwanda border.

Regional ply between Bujumbura, Kigali, Kampala and Nairobi, Dar es Saalam.
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