Walking to work would be the remaining option

Recently, this news paper reported about the plans by public transport operators to hike transport fares to a whopping 100 percent increase in order to be able to meet the high costs of operation. This development was confirmed by the Rwanda Utilities and Regulatory agency (RURA) boss Col. Deogene Mudenge who revealed that the talks about the issue with the public transport operators were still going on. Now, this means that if this proposal gets to be accepted and endorsed by RURA, I would be paying Rwf300 to get to my work place a price I don’t think will go well with my usual monthly budget or the budget of any other Kigalians. It may be true that the operators are having hard time meeting the operating costs of the buses most especially in this period of economic hardships, but I don’t think that such an increase would be fair to the general public either. Some people with whom I have managed to engage in the talk about this issue have all been telling me that if such a decision is taken, there would be no any other option left for them but to resort to walking to and from work. Where as walking wouldn’t be a bad idea in terms of keeping fit and having good health, it might also lead to less efficient workers due to reaching their work places late. Prices for different things have been increasing in the past and we expect them to continue like the RURA Director General said. “We are not only discussing transport fares but also prices of consumables and other services, said Mudenge. This means that prices for other things are also expected to increase in the near future. The situation of prices hiking is unavoidable in general, but when it comes to transport fares, the situation becomes tricky most especially in urban areas like Kigali where lives of the dwellers revolve around several movements around the city while working around their errands. My petition to RURA is that if they are going to consider revising the rates, then they should do it considering the consequences the action could have on the general public because if transport charges rise to such a percentage, then it will mean that the last option for many of us will be walking to and from our places of work. Ends