EDITORIAL COMMENT: President’s master-stroke fixes transport woes

The rapid return to the basic urban services over the weekend as private operators released more buses and kombis into the fleet appears to be a direct result of President Mnangagwa picking up the complaints, hauling everyone in to find out precisely what was going on, or rather not going on, and then cutting through the knotted tangle to get buses moving.

This has seen the franchised buses, those that private owners operate under the Zupco colours, fares and rules, back on the roads.

It needed a new agreement on the hire charges, to cope with the recent inflationary spell in things like tyres, parts, fuel and pay, and it needed a commitment by Zupco and its Treasury backer to pay these charges promptly.

There are a whole lot of factors, but the basic one was that there were not enough buses on the road prepared to accept the affordable fares set by Zupco, and that was something the President, a listening leader, once he was given facts and figures, could fix.

He also went further and pressed for some more permanent solutions. One was ceasing the rigid split of the Zupco and private fleets into town and country buses.

Buses can do both jobs, and one every obvious way of increasing the urban fleet size in the peaks early in the morning, when most people go to work, and the peaks early in the evening, when most people go home, is to reassign a lot of rural buses for a few hours.

So an intercity bus can work the urban early morning routes, return to depot, refuel and leave on an intercity or rural run.

Because Zimbabwe is a modest sized country many intercity and rural buses are in Harare by mid-afternoon from wherever they left that morning, and so can be assigned for a few hours of urban work.

It seems logical that around half the intercity fleet can do this extra work each day. You might need to hire some extra drivers, but the bus itself can be driven for more than a single shift.

The longer-term measure was to see that public transport is going to have to be a joint operation by public and private companies and fleets for some time, so we need to upgrade the levels of co-operation and work out how everyone can make the largest possible contribution, preferably with agreements and such like ready in place to cope with changing circumstances.

One area announced by the President was to allow private companies to operate urban services directly. He was careful to state that there would have to be rules and regulations, and that everyone licensed for such services would need to follow them, which is essential.

But this does cut through the tangle of ideology, and allows clear distinction between ownership of assets, which can be spread, and operational requirements, which need to be common but can be hammered out when everyone is working together to make something work.

Already there is the Zupco franchise arrangement, but this can be developed and extended with multiple types of contract, and some way of including the bus and kombi owners within the planning system and even operations.

Or there can also be separate services, but operating under a common plan. Practical operational considerations should govern how this is put together. The important point is that it now can happen, and the President will ensure it will happen.

Bus passengers are not that fussed about whose bus they go to work in or their children travel in for school. What they want is a functional system, with high levels of safety and efficiency and rational and affordable fares, something the President noted promptly when the tangle needed his intervention to sort out.

To some extent, there are guides from the times when there was a ban on intercity services as part of the lockdown needed to fight the spread of Covid-19.

Some rather innovative private bus owners figure out new route systems. For example, there was a company offering direct Chitungwiza-Msasa Industrial and Budiriro-Msasa routes early in the morning and when work finished.

Passengers saved a little on having a single fare, which was higher than one Zupco ticket, but mainly leapt aboard the buses because they could go home in one trip, without having to tramp between terminuses halfway across the city centre and queue for another bus.

If our transport experts take the opening created by the President and bring in all the bus operators, we should be able to apply some Zimbabwean common sense and create the sort of system we need, both the passengers, who must come first of course, and those who own the buses and provide the services.

The President also found out that many bus operators were prepared to expand their fleets. So he announced a policy of duty-free imports, again with the conditions to be set, for one year.

This will allow a more rapid expansion that the Government imports and the start of the local assembly with the first containers of kits now in Harare. We have a lot of catching up to do and getting more quickly to minimum fleet size will help.

A lot of the transformation in the last few days was a result of what President Mnangagwa has always said: He is a listening President and he heard the growing frustrations of the urban bus passengers and leant in to find out the source of the frustrations and then sort out the mess.

Now those who, in various ways, helped create the mess in the first place need to take the immediate fix and work out better and more resilient systems so we do not get the mess returning.

The President showed a high level of innovation and openness to new ideas, as well as decision making, and we hope some of that rubs off on those responsible for managing public transport.

The President might have been able to fix the latest mess, but the onus remains on those who manage the system to keep it fixed and work together to make it better every day.

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