How safe is that taxi, boda or bus you are using?

The moment you sit on a boda boda or a taxi, and even a bus, it is said in some circles, you are signing your death certificate. The second the motorcycle rider switches the engine on and the two wheeled machine is set in motion, you dear passenger, it is said, are on your way to the grave. Chances are high you have seen the shrewd boda boda man squeeze his way through two fast moving trucks, trying to overtake them. He dodges a speeding taxi managing to cross to the other side, narrowly escaping a hit. An accident has miraculously not happened. This however, is not a one-chance happening. It is an hourly occurrence, perhaps even more frequent.

Uganda’s public transport sector has grown by leaps and bounds. That is a settled fact. And it is why discussion on the safety of the vessels we use on the road and even in the waters is as important as it is urgent. It touches on life and death. For us all, including those who do not use them. There is no one way out of it. But is the safety talk and/or lack of it exaggerated?
Mulago National Referral Hospital’s casualty ward paints the most vivid picture of the situation. There lie several patients patched dexterously on blood stained beds, with shattered rib cages, limbs and skulls. Some lie on the floor, wincing in excruciating pain with blood oozing as more are wheeled in. These are victims of accidents, majority from boda bodas. Currently, there are only four surgeons at the hospital against the at least 10 people who are brought in and need surgery daily. In the north, Kumi Hospital, which is majorly an orthopaedic facility, serves several districts in the eastern and northern parts of Uganda and is filled to the brim, majority of patients being victims of road accidents.

According to the Injury Control Centre Uganda, Mulago hospital alone receives five to 20 boda boda accident cases every day, resulting in 7,280 cases in a year. A five-year (2008-2012) injury and fatality trends report from Police indicates that 3,043 motorcyclists were injured in accidents in 2012, a significant increase from 1,795 cyclists injured in 2008.
The same report shows that passenger fatalities as a result of road traffic accidents increased from 3,951 in 2008 to 5,145 in 2012. Certainly, the numbers have risen in the last two years. And so have the number of boda bodas, estimated at over 300,000 as well as taxis and buses in their tens of thousands.
Steven Kasiima the police director road safety and traffic department observes, “There is a remarkable improvement in the taxis and buses but the problem still remains with the boda bodas.” Kasiima puts the success rate in reducing the number of accidents on buses and taxis at 57 per cent since 2013. At one point, he recalls, traffic police had to accompany buses and taxis plying the up country routes.

“The situation has now improved, we can take a month without receiving accident reports from some parts of the country,” he says. The Transport Licensing Board he says, has had its homework to do, to bring safety to these transport means, ranging from continuous engagement with bus and taxi owners to strict supervision of drivers, conductors and inspection of cars.
The picture, however, is not as rosy. A few years ago, taxis and buses were hubs of insecurity, with highway robbers taking advantage of often security loose points such as Mabira Forest on the (Jinja-Kampala highway) to rob passengers of their belongings and at times lives, at gun point.
Dr Kasiima says this is slowly but surely returning. He attributes the challenge to the disbanding of the Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers’ Association which played an integral regulatory role in the sector.

“For taxis, when Utoda was banned, we got issues, it was managing drivers and conductors and no one would drive without a driving permit, but now criminal gangs are emerging because the Utoda eye is no more and yet police enforcement is limited. We don’t allocate stages, ours is to arrest offenders,” he told this reporter in an interview. He added, “Taxis have now become a hub for pick pockets and other petty criminals, they use the front seat to confuse you and steal your belongings. However those at the designated stages are safe. The one you pick along the way can be dangerous.”

Health concerns abound
Apart from one’s safety, there are questions to be asked about the health situation. From skin diseases to air borne diseases, to fleas like bedbugs hibernating in old, dirty seats, how safe are you in that taxi or bus?
“Of course the hygiene in most taxis is horrible, they are never cleaned, but the buses try to maintain hygiene. Frequent travellers certainly have to fear for airborne diseases, especially with the crowding,” Mr Henry Mutebe, a lecturer with Kyambogo University says.
Away from road transport, there are other types, such as water transport to consider.

“Accidents on water bodies will take a little longer to reduce as government agencies continue dilly dallying on guidelines and regulations for the water transport sector,” this newspaper reported in May following the death of a city tycoon’s son, Olavi Matovu. To date ferries and ships are the only vessels regulated by the Transport Licensing Board, the head of police’s marine unit, Mr James Apora admitted. Mr Apora said even the accident, in which a boat carrying Congolese refugees capsized on Lake Albert a few months ago, claiming several lives could have been averted had the regulations been in place.
“The Beach Management Unit could not have allowed that boat to carry excess passengers but without guidelines it is hard to do enforcement,” he said in an interview.
Ideally, he explains, every boat is meant to have a number plate, its mechanical condition cleared, the capacity approved and traffic on water regulated. All these, however, remain on the police’s wish list, at least for now.

Ali Kinawa, a fisherman, who was part of the search team for Matovu’s body, said: “It is a free world here in the waters. Anyone can bring their boat and sail and we enter the lake any time. I have not heard of police regulations, although at times security is tight when ‘big’ people are around.” As of June this year, the police had recorded at least 50 deaths on water bodies with majority of cases being suicide and drowning.
So how can the trend be changed? More than 50 per cent of boda boda cyclists across the country, have been trained in road etiquette as part of the force’s centennial celebrations, the police’s traffic department says. This however does not reflect on the accident trends. 10-20 people on average in a day is simply too much.
“Most of them are just stubborn and reckless. They do not value their own lives and that of their passengers,” Kasiima says in explanation. But the police, independent sources assert, has also back tracked on its crash helmets and seat belts campaign.
The police on its part blame this on the local politicking that does not allow the force to enforce the rules to the letter. Who suffers? The passenger who, as Mr Mutebe says, “should also exercise personal judgment and care by wearing protective gear. Life is too precious to be left to the government to police.”
The same debate holds for the seat belts in Public Service Vehicles. For these ones, though, the problem stretches beyond politics.
“The taxis are imported without seats, those seats are fitted in Kampala and with such an arrangement, we cannot have seatbelts in all taxis and if we do, they are substandard. They are also dirty so passengers are discouraged,” the traffic police chief says.
To reverse the situation, Kasiima argues, a consortium of efforts by police, Uganda Bureau of Standards, Ministry of Health and Transport Licensing Board have to come on board. Anything short of that, the safety of our public transport sector will be a discussion that will keep going round in circles.

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