The President came out very strongly about the state of our driving in Kenya the other day, using the word 'lousy' to impress upon us on our very limited skills as drivers. This should not come as a surprise. Hon. Mwakwere (PNU, Matuga) and Hon. Kimunya (PNU, Kipipiri) are on the record that the job of ensuring the safety of motorists on our roads lies with the Minister for Internal Security and his Traffic Police force. Hon. Prof. Saitoti (PNU, Kajiado North) has had very little to say. Indeed, the only time he has ever spoken about the transport sector was only tangentially after the horrific Sachang'wan Inferno in which several Kenyans were killed when a trailer transporting fuel overturned and area residents took the highly risky opportunity to siphon fuel from the stricken vehicle. Other than then, it seems that he is more concerned about the International Criminal Court and cross-border terrorism than with the safety of the roads in Kenya.
It is rumoured that we have a National Transport Policy which has been adopted and adapted by the government of Singapore to ease the traffic congestion that is experienced on the island city-state. If this is the case, we must already know that a solution can be found for the problems that assail the transport sector, especially in the urban areas. Road traffic fatalities, after a lull in the early stages of this decade, are on the rise once more. It is said that thousands are killed or injured in road traffic accidents. Many of them can be laid at the door of the matatu industry, especially the 14-seater minibuses. The largest number of fatalities and serious injuries from road traffic accidents attributed to the transport industry are to be found when these minibuses are involved. Many are dangerously, nay, recklessly, driven. Many do not comply with the speed-governor requirements of the government. Many are operated by crews of dubious training or competence. Indeed, I would go so far to say that other than the employment figures attributed to these buses, and the revenue they generate, they are a great risk to the transport industry and it is time we began an earnest phasing out programme of these vehicles from the transport sector.
One of the main reasons why the transport sector is in such a shambles is the involvement of organised crime groups in the industry. It is an open secret that in Nairobi and Nakuru it is the Mungiki that calls the shots on where and when certain matatus can ply their trade. Because of the demands of this gang, the owners of matatus are overly incentivised to raise their daily revenue at the expense of safety. They are thus motivated to cut corners on maintenance and regulatory compliance in order to meet the demands of a criminal gang that cares for neither. As a result, matatus are sometimes unfairly targetted whenever tragedy occurs on our roads.
The owners of matatus are more concerned with meeting the daily extortionate requirements of the Mungiki that they have very little time for the concerns of their passengers or the welfare of the transport sector as a whole. When you are asked to part with a portion of your revenue to a gang that uses extreme violence to make its demands, there is very little incentive to consider the needs of others, let alone the little question of improving the sector such that all stakeholders operate at their highest level of profitability, safety and professionalism.
The City Fathers of Nairobi should also come in for some stick. Despite the laudable attempts of ensuring that the matatus plying intra-city routes play by the rules, it is becoming evident that because many city councillors are owners and operators of matatus, they are also caught up in a dilemma: do they ensure that there is a level playing field or do they maximise profits before they are violently forced out by the Mungiki?
When the Kenya Bus Service enjoyed a monopoly of entry into the Nairobi Central Business District, there was a semblance of order and certainty. Buses could only pick up and drop off passengers at designated stages and termini, and they all ran on a strict timetable. The liberalisation of this policy allowed other players to enter the CBD, but they seem to have jettisoned the requirements for timetabling and other measures also. Nowadays, it is common to witness buses and matatus stopping in the middle of the road to pick up and drop off passengers. The 'overlapping' that is common during the rush hours of the day are as a result of the desire for profit at the expense of almost everything else. The Traffic Police Department is overwhelmed by the increasing numbers of motor vehicles on the city roads that they have simply given up on enforcing many of the rules of the road. It is becoming more and more difficult to drive safely to and from work and this situation is getting worse by the day. As a result, thousands of man-hours are lost each year to delays in traffic and national economic productivity is suffering as a result.
A solution that has been suggested countless times is an integrated mass-transit system to cater for the increasing number of transport stakeholders, including passengers, motorists, transport company owners and regulators. The Kenya Railways Corporation is planning to expand and improve its intra- and inter-city passenger services to cater for the increasing number of passengers. The City Council of Nairobi together with the Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development have embarked on a programme to limit the number of parking slots in the CBD while at the same time increasing the parking rates paid by those lucky enough to find the increasingly fewer number of slots available. The City Council and the Ministry of Local Government have embarked on the modernisation and expansion of bus termini in and around the city. However, all these will come a cropper if there are insufficient numbers of safe, efficient and reliable buses and matatus.
New rules are needed to regulate how transport sector players operate, especially in urban areas. Their enforcement will be crucial to ensuring that they play by the rules. The Michuki Rules were a step in the right direction, but they were insufficient as they only dealt with the question of safety. They did not address the question of reliability or efficiency. It is time a system similar to the one that the KBS operated is mandated for the entire transport sector. Buses and matatus must ply designated routes and must only pick up and drop off passengers in designated areas. They must also follow a designated timetable. For this to work, the numbers of buses licenses to operate from the CBD must be limited and this rule ruthlessly enforced. Designated mass-transit lanes must be created and the safety and efficiency of the system must be enforced and monitored from a central point.
All motorists, regardless of whether they are in the transport sector or not, must meet stringent higher standards before they are allowed to operate vehicles on our roads and drink-driving rules must be ruthlessly enforced. Finally, the power of the Mungiki and other similar organised crime gangs must be crushed to allow for the modernisation of the transport sector in order to assure investors of the safety of their investments. This means that all operators and stakeholders must join hands to suggest ways and means of improving this sorry situation. For instance, the Kenya Police, the City Council and the relevant ministries can identify the crime-hotspots in and around the city in order to track the activities of criminals leeching off the transport sector. The passengers who ply these routs can participate by providing information, even anonymously, to the relevant authorities. In the end, only collaboration will begin to address the problems of transport.
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