07 Jun 2020

Public service vehicles have been  allowed to carry up to full capacity effective from June 6.

Acting Director of the department of road transport and safety in the Ministry of Transport and Communication, Mr Godwin Tlhogo announced during a press conference, June 6 that transport operators were still expected to the comply to the COVID-19 protocols.

Mr Tlhogo explained that after lengthy discussions with the relevant stakeholders, it was concluded that as long as the passengers wore masks, sanitised and registered with the vehicle driver, there was no reason to not allow 100 percentage passenger capacity.

“We received a letter from the Bus Operators Association not so long ago requesting for at least an 80 percentage passenger capacity as public transport vehicles were not making profit at all.

We discussed and reached an agreement to allow 100 percentage with the permission from the COVID-19 task team,” he said.

He said the public transport operators also requested to be given sanitizers as they could not afford to buy them. He said they took it upon themselves to carry out a survey last week which revealed that there was shortage of public transport.

He explained that the delay in responding to the pleas of the bus Operators Association was because they took advice from the health sector and until they were given the green light they could not make the decision  to allow 100 per cent operation of public transport.

“It is worth noting that this is a matter that has been on the table way before the said strike which allegedly took place at the bus rank during the early hours of this day, we care about our public vehicle operators though they may think we do not,” he highlighted.

Mr Tlhogo also cleared that touting would not be permissible until further notice.

He said the same also applied to those who sold food items, jewellery and other small staff inside the buses, adding they would not be allowed to enter any public transport.

“If anyone enters a bus with the intention to sell something to the passengers no matter how small it is, that person will be charged and we rely on the passengers and the driver to report such misconduct.”

According to the Botswana Gazette, ‘a seat on a public vehicle shall not be shared with all fares being paid in full for a passenger including a child who is over the apparent age of five years.’

Mr Tlhogo further clarified that siblings aged between five and 12 could however share a seat while travelling together with their parent/s.

In an interview with BOPA earlier, Botswana Bus Operators Union Chairperson Mr Tirafalo Mponang expressed gratitude over the decision to allow them to operate their business the normal way which was in place before the extreme social distancing.

“We are happy that our pleas were at last attended to. We took the decision to halt long distance buses as a way to get the authorities’ attention because talking with them trying to meet halfway was rather not working for us,” he explained.

“On June 1, we wrote a letter to transport department requesting them to give us feedback on this issue of carrying a certain number for different public vehicles, sadly no one responded which is why we opted to suspend long distance transport from this morning,” he said.

“We could not carry on operating on the existing regulations because it was a huge loss which was evident enough for all to see,” Mr Mponang said.
Commuters through social media expressed different takes on the amendment.

Gaone Kaiwa of Mmopane said she was excited that finally the long queues that they had to endure after long hours of work would come to an end.

“In the past week I had to be at the combi stop by 5am if I wanted to get to work on time and I always caught a combi at around nine everyday as there were always long queues,” she said.

Theo Letumile however said he was fearing for the spread of the virus as some combi operators were not adhering to the regulations.

“I am really stressed because in some combis the driver does not sanitise the passengers let alone register them. Will they do it with full passenger capacity when they failed with a limited number,” he said. Ends