07 Jan 2014

The Botswana Bus Operators Association (BOBOA) has blamed long festive season passenger queues at the bus rank on the Department of Road Transport and Safety.

BOBOA deputy chairperson, Mr Tiragalo Mponang said in an interview that the Department of Road Transport and Safety (Promotions), which was mandated with the issuance of special permits,  only started issuing the permits on December 24 when they had expected that the permits would be issued on December 20 as usual.

He explained that congestion started on December 21 and got worse on the 24th. Due to long queues many  travelers opted for the often dangerous hitch-hike.

Mr Mponang said normally, all stakeholders, namely, the Department of Transport, Road and Safety (Inspectorate), the Botswana Police Service and BOBOA, met before the festive season or any other holiday to discuss, amongst others, issues of transport congestion, but this did not happen this time around.

He said the issuance of special permits to individual bus operators followed a  previous suggestion by BOBOA after the organization observed there was congestions in the build-up to the festive seasons.

Mr Mponang said one of the suggestions was that special permits should be issued to mini buses for shorter distances such as Mochudi, Ramotswa and Molepolole while for long distances such as the AI (Gaborone/Francistown, Francistown/Maun, Gaborone/ Ghanzi etc) be issued for  buses with a minimum 60 seats.

He said congestion before the festive season was caused by the fact that people travelled at once as everyone hurried to get home before Christmas while on the other hand, employer institutions across all sectors closed at the same time. “Many people do not want to miss out on the Christmas and New Year’s festivities,” he added.

Mr Mponang noted that generally there was  no congestion when people returned from the festive season. He said this was because normally people came at different times as some applied for extended leave days while other institutions opened only in the second or third week of the new year. Mr Mponang said the transport stakeholders would meet in the near future for feedback. ENDS