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THE chickens are finally coming home to roost, and we commend the Civil Protection Unit, the Insurance Council of Zimbabwe and a local funeral parlour for the bold steps they are taking to protect the rights of the travelling public from unscrupulous transporters whose motives are super profits, instead of ensuring the safety of their clients.

A lot of these transporters have, for a long time, operated without meaningful passenger insurance cover. This has been problematic not only for accident victims and their families, but also for Government.

However, this might soon be a thing of the past. As we reported yesterday, Government will no longer tolerate public transporters operating without requisite passenger insurance policies “as this often results in it spending large sums of taxpayers’ money to cover funeral expenses.”

Public transport — buses and commuter omnibuses have for decades been involved in many accidents where thousands of lives have been needlessly lost and some people have been maimed for life.

Family members of these accident victims have been short-changed since the transport owners never paid compensation. Very few of these transporters rendered any form of assistance.

The burden has been placed on taxpayers, since major accidents have been declared national disasters, and Government provided the necessary assistance for the bereaved and the injured. This has bled the national fiscus while the transport owners continued to be in business and reaping profits.

However, the CPU director Mr Madzudzo Pawadyira has said it’s time transporters took full responsibility for funeral expenses after tragic accidents. This is the standard internationally.

The riot act that Mr Madzudzo read out should not only be taken seriously by public transporters, but it should be implemented as soon as possible: “Public transport operators should have their insurance policies which cover passengers in an event of an accident. There has been limited liability on the part of public transporters and they were not taking responsibility after an accident.

“This was when Government was chipping in to give the deceased a decent burial and whoever was responsible for the accident, we would then make a claim. That is the provision of the law, but there are always gaps within the law.

“We are saying public transporters should close the loopholes so that all passengers are covered in the event of an accident,” said Mr Pawadyira.

This is very commendable, and requisite policies must be put in place to ensure that the insurance policies are purchased, and to also ensure that in the event of a tragic accident, the insurance policy will be fully used to assist the victims of the accident and their families.

In the same vein, we congratulate the agreement reached between ICZ and Nyaradzo last Wednesday for the provision of on-the-spot funeral services in the event of death of passengers in a public transport.

The sentiments raised by ICZ chairperson Mrs Grace Muradzikwa, have also been of concern among members of the public. She lamented: “For some time now, we have been concerned with the lead time it takes to provide services following road traffic accidents involving insured vehicles. Now Nyaradzo can move in while the necessary paperwork is sorted out later.”

We hope that ICZ will strike similar deals with other major funeral companies, and companies that offer ambulance services.

These radical moves by the CPU, ICZ and Nyaradzo Funeral Company, if well implemented, will bring sanity in the public transportation system.

At the end of the day, it will be the people that will emerge winners because they will feel safe to travel on our roads.