TRANSPORT-BRAZIL: Casualties in War on Unlicenced Vans

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 8 2000 (IPS) - Casualties have already occurred in the all-out offensive unleashed by the city government of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, against the “peruas,” the local name for vans providing unauthorised urban transport.

While attempting to evade municipal inspectors, the driver of one of these vans crashed with another vehicle and into a tree last Friday. Three passengers were killed and eight injured.

Thomaz Martins, 22, was driving the perua without the necessary license, as he is deaf in one ear, which makes it illegal for him to work as a professional driver. In addition, his conductor was a 13-year-old boy.

Martins, who was arrested after the accident, is facing up to 20 years in prison.

A week earlier, the driver of another van was shot and killed by police while trying to escape inspection.

The police crackdown has removed around 1,300 vans- which have a capacity to carry around 10 passengers – from the streets this year, and the drivers or “perueiros” have faced heavy fines.

In response, the perueiros have set fire to or otherwise damaged more than 30 buses, and their frequent street protests have blocked traffic in Sao Paulo.

In the face of the increasingly tense atmosphere, Mayor Celso Pitta asked the army for help in cracking down on the illegal transport vehicles, accusing the governor of the state of Sao Paulo, Mario Covas, of refusing him support from the state’s military police force.

But like the governor, the army responded that the task did not fall within the duties of the police or military.

According to analysts like transportation expert Mauricio Cadava, the decision to clean the streets of the illegally operating vans came too late.

Parliamentary Deputy Emerson Kapaz, a candidate for mayor of Sao Paulo, said that what was occurring was a “civil war” that had escalated due to the failure of previous attempts to get the situation under control.

The number of vans operating without a licence in this city of 17 million has mushroomed in the past few years. Local authorities and others involved in the question estimate that the number has risen at least threefold since 1995, from 5,000 to 14,000 – or as many as 18,000 – today.

This branch of the informal economy in Sao Paulo provides jobs to around 42,000 people, including the owners of the vehicles, drivers and conductors, said the president of a “perueiros” union, Celio dos Santos, who admitted that the number of vans operating was excessive.

Dos Santos believes a ceiling of 8,000 should be set in Sao Paulo. But the city government wants to authorise only slightly over 4,000, to be selected in a competitive tender.

But controlling the vans and reducing their number will be difficult, now that they already have a hold on part of the market, said Cadaval, who attributed the growth in the number of vans to the poor quality of the city’s mass transit system and to the high unemployment level, which has led to a boom in the informal economy in general.

The crackdown was called for by Transurb, the association of bus companies, which complain of the loss of passengers and increasing traffic congestion.

Today, the 10,300 licenced buses operating in Sao Paulo drive at an average of 12.5 kilometres an hour, compared to 19 kilometres an hour in 1995, Transurb reported.

Sao Paulo’s legally operating bus companies have lost 35 percent of their passengers since 1994, with the daily total plunging from six million to 3.8 million, according to the National Transport Confederation, which also represents bus companies.

A similar phenomenon is occurring in other large cities in Brazil, which are also attempting to curb the growing number of unauthorised vans and to regulate their activity.

But in Sao Paulo, the situation took on an especially explosive twist as it added a new source of conflict in a city already shaken by frequent battles between police and street vendors and the homeless squatting in abandoned buildings.