The public transport bus capacity in the City of Kigali has reduced, yet the population of the City is on the rise, which limits the availability of transport means for passengers, Auditor General Alexis Kamuhire has revealed.

He said this while presenting to a joint session of Parliament his annual audit report findings for the 2021/2022 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2022.

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Kamuhire indicated that the audit carried out on the infrastructure/transport sector – specifically the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) – showed that the capacity of transporting passengers in public buses as of 2022, was smaller than that of 2015.

He indicated that, in 2015, there were 22,238 passenger seats in public buses in the City of Kigali, but that capacity dropped to 19,961 seats in 2022 – implying a 10 per cent reduction.

In the City of Kigali alone, he said, an estimated 2,300 people 'are unable to move' by public transport daily, compared to how they were travelling in 2015.

"This resulted in increasing queues of passengers who waited for public buses,” he said.

"RURA should devise strategies that can address the issues which cause the inadequacy of public transport cars,” he said, suggesting that to address the issue, there is a need for investment in public transport so that the number of cars increases.

Meanwhile, he said that the public entities that the Office of the Auditor General talked with, gave assurance that they started the process to produce more buses so that people would be able to move easily.

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MP Theogene Munyangeyo, the Chairperson of Committee on Economy and Trade in the Lower House, wondered whether the public transport issue might not be stemming from the privatisation model of ONATRACOM – the sole public transport agency.

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"If there were 22,238 public bus seats in 2015, and they will be reduced by 2,277 seats in 2022, yet statistics indicate that the number of residents in the City [of Kigali] is increasing, that would be a regression,” Munyangeyo said.

He said that, from one case, he observed that at 9 pm, people are still in queues waiting for public buses in Nyabugogo and Remera car parks.

"We should look into that in order to solve the issue,” he said, pointing out that parliamentarians should assess the privatisation of ONATRACOM, and suggesting that the Government should review the privatisation approach if it was not working.

Meanwhile, in 2022, the vice mayor in charge of urbanisation and infrastructure in the City of Kigali, Mérard Mpabwanamaguru, revealed that since 2013 when three public transport companies were selected to ply all Kigali routes, public buses had reduced to one third of the original fleet.

Mpabwanamaguru indicated that some were no longer roadworthy, while others were withdrawn due to Covid-19 impact, among other factors.