Rura, CoK to blame for the mess in city transport system

Editor,Refer to the article, “Bus owners warned against overloading” (The New Times, January 9). All I can say is that Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (Rura) should have seen this coming; they should actually not forget that they are responsible for the mess.Though I do not advocate for overloading in public transport vehicles, due to the various dangers that passengers would be involved in like the number of causalities in the event of an accident or easy spread of contagious diseases, giving a mere warning to transport operators will not help much.Last year, when Rura chose to kill competition by excluding certain operators ruling that that only three select companies be offered the exclusivity in transport services around the City of Kigali, they were well aware that the companies lacked enough capacity to provide the services to the over 200,000 passengers (as said in the article, though I doubt the number).Before behaving in such high-handedness manner, Rura and the City of Kigali should have remembered that the city has over a million dwellers. And that all those people move – in other words, they are commuters.Whether they are daily passengers or not, everyone will at one point need transport.Rura gave the companies three months to bring in more buses which proved to be an uphill task as the firms were reportedly cash-strapped. Issuing the companies warning will not ease the plight of passengers around town, as they are already suffering.Let me quote Jean-Claude Rurangwa, the in-charge of public transport and safety management in the City of Kigali, in the article published in The New Times on September 5:“There is still a gap of 200 buses in the City of Kigali. There are also loopholes in the new transport arrangement but it is still too early, we hope the companies will fix these issues. The contractors will need to find the remaining buses within three months from August 30 as agreed in the contract.”So let me ask Mr Rurangwa: where are those new buses now? What do you say about passengers who come to work late and reach home late because they can’t afford moto (commercial motorcycles) and the elderly who sleep at the bus stages because they can’t spend more than 20 minutes standing?For passengers, being crammed into a bus is a small price to pay compared to waiting in vain for buses.Giving warning to transport companies doesn’t solve the problem; it only makes it tighter for the passengers. What Rura should have undertaken is to facilitate and aid in the bringing in extra buses to bridge the existing shortage.Though the new system was expected to bring order into the transport system in the city, it came at a cost that the regulatory authority didn’t foresee or ignored. Before the new system came into place, there was not much to complain about and buses were everywhere for all, every time; competition was increasingly bearing fruits.That is what happens when we don’t consult enough.A visit to any taxi park in the city will prove me right. There are either long queues or passengers pushing to get into the buses after they have been kept waiting for hours and are trying to avoid getting to work or home so late.My take is that the situation on overcrowding will not ease any time soon, and if it were to ease, then the 30-minute or so wait for the bus will only increase to an hour.Amri Ruhashya, Kigali

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Rura, CoK to blame for the mess in city transport system