12 Mar 2014

The law is silent on the practice of charging passengers fees lower than the legal fees whereas charging passengers more money than the legal fare of P3.50 for a mini-bus, P4.10 taxi and P21.00 taxi special is a criminal offence.

Mahalapye transport station manager, Mr. Desmond Dagwi said this in an interview recently. “The law is silent on undercharging, so no public transport operator can be charged for undercharging,” he said. 

He went on to say sometimes the silence of the law on undercharging could be abused by public transport operators to take their colleagues out of business. 

He cited what once happened in the Mmanaka route in Francistown where taxi operators lowered their fares to equal those of mini-buses, and customers went for the taxis and thus depriving the mini-buses of business.

The mini bus operators left the route and others left the public transport business and once all the mini buses had left the route, the taxi operators went back to the legal prizing and had all the passengers to themselves.

Commenting on this, Mahalapye transport inspector, Mr Michael Mazibane said undercharging passengers was a competitive tool used by public transport operators to stay in business. 

He however, called upon passengers to report any public transport operator who overcharged them. Ends