daniel chigunwe
A significant majority of the working population of Harare Metropolitan rely on public transport to get to and from work, and during the school term they are joined by a large group of schoolchildren who attend schools beyond normal walking distances.
The overwhelming bulk of vehicles involved in this major movement of people every day are privately-owned, Zupco’s contribution now being insignificant outside the dedicated services for a range of civil servants.
This means that proper standards and requirements need to be set, and then enforced, to ensure high levels of safety for the passengers as well as ease of use, a requirement not always highlighted by Harare City Council, although it should be.
In the absence of the city council showing any interest whatsoever, the police have taken on the burden of enforcement, at least so far as the registration, licensing and insurance of kombis is concerned and the continuing effort to get pirate taxis, the mushikashikas, off the roads since they cannot be registered and insured for the sort of public transport service they offer.
The problems of the terminuses in the city centre and the ranks in the city centre and many suburban areas has so far been left to the city council who, after a brief surge of energy for a few weeks last year when they did manage to contain the touts, have relapsed back into total inactivity and allowed protection rackets to resume to the detriment of both the passengers who need to board kombis and the drivers and owners of the kombis.
The police estimate that only around 2 950 kombis are properly and up-to-date registered for public transport in Harare Metropolitan, with more than 13 000 others existing, but not compliant or fully compliant with the requirements.
Some of these are not even runners and will never return to the roads, but there is a large group that are offering services, but whose owners need to go through the procedures and get all the permits and licences required.
A compliant kombi owner needs the normal ZINARA licence and vehicle insurance.
But as a public service vehicle the kombi needs the operator’s licence, requiring in turn a Zimra tax clearance certificate, the additional passenger insurance, the red on white registration plates including the third plate so there cannot be substitution, a certificate of fitness, a City of Harare permit, RMT route authority and a City of Harare rank disc.
None of this is impossible to obtain, and the fact that almost 3 000 kombis have the required paperwork, discs, plates and the like shows that it is routine for an operator who keeps the kombi in shape and pays the required fees.
The rest need to get their roadworthy kombis fixed up so all offering services are compliant.
But it is a fair amount of paperwork to display at a police checkpoint and we think it should be possible to work out some way of obtaining advance clearance and a single combined pass of some sort so that compliant kombis are not held up at checkpoints and passengers delayed.
This requires a degree of trust and the police could limit the special passes to kombis owned by operators who belong to reputable associations.
Another way of enforcing the rules without causing delays and congestion would be to enforce the rules about dropping off and picking up passengers.
Generally this must be done at the four city centre terminuses and associated ranks since the terminuses are generally on the small side.
We also think the city council should be willing to have more bus stops at suitable points so people can be dropped off nearer where they need to go. There is also that problem of no central bus station, with three of the four terminuses to the west of the city centre and one, the largest, well over 1km to the east.
Kombis should be allowed to loop around the city centre so they can drop off passengers at both groups of terminuses.
At some stage, the city council and the National Railways of Zimbabwe need to work out how to use that huge railway reserve at the south of the city centre as a proper railways station for commuter and long distance travel plus the huge central bus station next door, which in a multi-storey structure could include a huge vendors market and get traders off the pavements.
The railways could be compensated for the land they surrender to buses by land in Aspindale and other suitable areas.
The existing terminuses are maintained to a degree by the kombi crews that use them, although there are limits what they can do.
The city council, as expected, does nothing and there are not even proper rubbish bins for the vast amount of litter, instead piles of rubbish accumulate in informal dumps just outside as the users try and keep the rest of the area clear.
Kombi owners are prepared to pay modest charges to proper terminuses operators, rather than see their drivers extorted by touts, and would be more willing to pay if that money was used to upgrade and maintain the terminuses, with municipal staff keeping order and touts away, vendors prevented from grabbing bus bays for their stalls, proper garbage bins regularly emptied, decent public lighting, passenger shelters repaired or installed, and generally speaking creating modern clean bus stations for the passengers.
This sort of set up, with unauthorised stops prevented and all loading done at a terminus, make enforcement of the kombi rules simple, as police could just walk down the line and check over the permits, without having to have road blocks or checks. Patrols could prevent quiet parking away from the terminuses by the non-compliant.
By upgrading terminuses, allowing sensible legal bus stops and generally looking at the passengers as well as the kombis, Harare City Council could make the city centre a far more friendly place for public transport, which it must do as car ownership rises.
Every kombi replaces around 50 or so private cars, and having all those in the city centre will create total gridlock congestion.
So we need safe, efficient and passenger-orientated public transport and that requires co-operation between the police and transport operators, which is now happening as the police make it clear they will enforce the rules and so the non-compliant operators are fixing their paperwork.
But that is just the start. The upgrade also needs more cooperation between police and operators and the city council, with the council giving a lot of thought to the sort of services its residents who use public transport require and want, so that terminuses, bus stops and ranks are properly provided, are safe and at least clean and free of touts.
Online Reporter
