News
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Kenya ban takes toll
NAIROBI, Kenya - The public transport sector in Kenya is in chaos after the government banned night travel in a bid to curb the rising road carnage.
The decision that was announced during the festive season by Transport Secretary Michael Kamau means that public service vehicles (PSV) can only operate during day time, a move that has caused passenger congestion at various locations within the country.
The ban also means disruption of business for various PSV operators a section of whom moved to court last week seeking to overturn the ban. However the ruling delivered in court Wednesday last week upheld the ban.
Most business people who depend on the sector have registered huge losses and still counting with not indication that the government will loosen its stand on the matter.
In Uganda, the ban has also caused some confusion. Most traders like to travel overnight, do their business during the day then hop onto a bus back to Kampala.
Bus operators who ply the Kampala-Nairobi route are not happy, because their turnover has been severely reduced.
Various businesses at the main up-country bus termini in Nairobi appealed to the government to reconsider its position claiming that the was negatively affecting them.Some of the businesses are said the have registered losses in excess of 80 per cent following the ban.Other businesses affected by the ban include, taxi operators, restaurants, retail shops and miraa traders around bus stops in Nairobi and major towns across the country.Operators claim they will soon go out of business if the ban is not lifted.
“Our business has gone down by 80 percent and we are now closing earlier since the night travel ban was imposed. We have a room capacity of 20, before the ban we used to be full board every night, now only six rooms are taken,” said one of the affected traders in Nairobi’s downtown.
The same complains were registered by Paul Okendo, a taxi driver who operates around Tea Room in Nairobi, who said since the ban he now only goes home with KSh1,000 while before he used to make about KSh3,000 a day.
“This travel ban has negatively affected my business, because the customers I was counting on were night travelers who come from Mombasa in the night and come in the morning now since the ban, I have no customers in the morning, I am now only targeting the travelers who jet in at 6 pm and by then, they always have transport, Its really bad, I might be forced to close shop,” Mwangi explains.
He also explained that his customers are complaining of the same. “I used to have customers who used to come in from Kisumu in the morning, we run errands the whole day and then they get to Kisumu the same evening; that has since stopped,” he narrated.
Also opposed to the ban is a businessman from Nairobi, who runs two other businesses in Mombasa and Kisumu. He pointed out that the night travel ban has increased expenses in his business operations.
“I manage my businesses once too often, work I used to do in two days I do it in four days now, which means more expenses and I use more time and time is money. I think the problem is not buses operating at night, I think the problem is with the police, they do not do their work to keep unroadworthy vehicles out of our roads, now their ineffectiveness has been implicated on us. It’s unfair,” Gilbert Nyende laments.
By Humphrey Liloba, Sunday, January 19th, 2014