KENYA-TRANSPORT: Matatus Meet Their Match

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Charles Wachira

NAIROBI, Mar 12 1996 (IPS) - The local saying covers it all. Once passengers board a Matatu bus only two choices exist — they either go to heaven or, if lucky, get safely to their destination.

The privately-owned Matatus, the bedrock of the public transport system here, are not for the faint-hearted. They buzz around the streets of the capital with a keen disregard for the safety of other road users, pedestrians and passengers alike.

Responding to the mounting carnage on the roads — 2,617 deaths countrywide last year — the government has stepped in and ordered all public and commercial vehicles to fit a speed recording device (SRD) to encourage drivers to stay within the 80 kph maximum speed limit.

All commercial vehicles whose weight exceeds three tonnes and taxis carrying more than seven passengers have a year from Mar. 1 to comply. A legal notice makes it mandatory for all new vehicles being registered and licenced to have SRDs fitted.

Now, when a driver is pulled over, an ‘I swear I was only doing 50, Officer,’ will no longer wash. The police are to be provided with equipment to read the SRDs for on-the-spot checks.

The initiative however has provoked an uproar from Matatu operators. “At 80 kms an hour, I can only make one trip to Muranga a day and that cannot generate enough money to pay my workers and at the same time maintain my fleet of cars,” complains John Mwangi.

Muranga is about 100 kms northeast of Nairobi and the fare is around 1.50 dollars.

But speeding is not the only problem. While an average Matatu is officially allowed to carry 18 passengers, its usual for 30 people to be crammed into one bus.

Although traffic police are meant to stop overloaded vehicles, it’s common practice for drivers to bribe their way out of trouble with the equivalent of a one dollar “tip”.

In a situation where a police corporal for instance earns approximately 70 dollars a month — with free accommodation in cramped government quarters thrown in — a few backhanders a day adds up to a significant addition to their income.

The police are also poorly equipped. Last month, the country’s Traffic Police Commandant, Geoffrey Mwathe, said the road carnage would continue until his division got some decent modern facilities.

“The unit does not have a single ambulance, its patrol motor vehicles are very few and its mobile base equipment became obsolete 14 years ago,” Mwathe lamented.

Official statistics show that between 1972 and 1982 accident cases actually fell by 6.8 percent — from 6,613 to 6,162 — despite the increase in road traffic because the police, according to the commandant, had the wherewithal to do their job.

The trend reversed dramatically over the next decade when accidents shot up by 95.8 percent from 7,524 cases in 1982 to 12,735 in 1992.

The SRD decision was announced by former Transport and communications minister, Dalmas Otieno, last month. He has since though been sacked for showing “disloyalty” to President Daniel Moi.

However, his initiative seems to be still on course. His deputy, Gerald Githinji, says “suppliers of the gadgets have supplied the government with the SRDs and they have proved to be very effective.”

Although admitting the devices are not fool-proof he believes they will rule out bribery and insists the scheme has met a positive response from transporters who were consulted over the framing of the strategy.

“The culprits, those who overspeed, will not escape paying court fines given the records in the devices will not be erased,” Githinji said.