Go ahead and kick boda boda out of city centre

On Wednesday, President Museveni announced a number of transportation options that he said government is going to focus on to reduce congestion in the city.

Among the options is the exiting of boda bodas from Kampala central business district and having them replaced with tri-cycles. This was during the launch of the start of construction of a flyover on Queen’s Way, a busy road in the city centre.

There have been pronouncements before regarding the modus operandi of the boda boda riders on Kampala roads because of the various hurdles and risks that accompany that transport business.

In 2016, KCCA had registered 30,000 riders when its last attempt to establish their numbers was thwarted and its agents attacked by unruly riders, presumably from Boda Boda 2010 whose influential leader Abdallah Kitatta, is now incarcerated after alledgedly being found with materials which are a monopoly of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces.

There have been internal difficulties during attempts to regularise the boda boda transport sector in Kampala, leaving the city transport in a mess.

The boda bodas are currently competing with vehicles on Kampala’s narrow roads. Besides, the indiscipline exhibited by the riders is beyond comprehension.

They have broken all the traffic rules and regulations while plying their business with impunity. They will ride on the wrong side of the road; they will swerve abruptly in the road and change lanes without warning.

If they are not doing that, then they are driving through the red lights, or crisscrossing on the road, putting the passengers and other road users at risk. More so, they have converted every available space on road shoulders into a boda stage, affecting the traffic flow.

Given, boda boda transport is handy in terms of trying to navigate through the city jams that have become a menace; however, the same boda bodas have become part of the problem.

The uncontrolled and unregulated numbers of the utility has many times contributed to the paralysis in the city leading to loss of revenue as a result of time lost in the gridlock.
The President’s pronouncement, this time around, should not be a smokescreen only to change when elections come.

Kampala City needs to be decongested for easy navigation and cut down on time spent in jams for better business. On top of that, according to the 2017 annual crime, traffic and road safety report, 31 per cent (6,310) of the total motor crashes in the country involved boda bodas and the government is spending billions of shillings to treat the casualties.
We can avoid this.