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Enter the tuk tuk, and everyone’s spluttering with pleasure (not the bodas)

Wednesday July 26 2017
tuktuk

The public has quickly warmed up to the tuk tuk, which is seen as safer than both the mini bus and the motorbike, and is much cheaper as it carries up to four passengers for the total price of one boda boda passenger. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGAH | NMG

By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

The tuk tuk, that three-wheeled motorcycle with a tarpaulin-covered passenger cabin so popular in the coastal towns of Mombasa and Dar, has finally joined Kampala’s public transport chaos.

Its arrival was not all that smooth as it was stiffly resisted by operators of our matatu version, the 14-seater minibus, simply called taxi, which is the dominant form of transport all over the country, and especially in Kampala.

The other stiff opponent of the tuk tuk are, of course, the boda bodas, the two-wheeler motorcycle taxis.

The public, however, quickly warmed up to the tuk tuk, which is seen as safer than both the mini bus and the motorbike, and is much cheaper as it carries up to four passengers for the total price of one boda boda passenger.

The tuk tuk operators, whose number is growing, should thank new MP Bobi Wine Kyagulanyi. During the heady by-election campaigns that brought him to parliament last month, the ruling party candidate was struggling to compete against him. In an apparent move to popularise the latter, the president declared, to much public relief, that the tuk tuks were free to operate, ending the resistance to them.

Many of us are unlikely to see sanity and order in Kampala’s traffic in our lifetime, but shall carry a rainbow of memories of Kampala’s transport with us to our next life.

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The past two decades have seen several attempts to reform the city’s transport sector, with minimal success. There was of course the entry of the boda boda, which had been operating in the border towns in the east, first as a manual bicycle and then graduating to motorbikes in Kampala.

The boda bodas initially faced the daily danger of being “accidentally” knocked down by cabbies whose business they threatened. The height of their recognition came at the start of the 1996 election campaigns when President Museveni rode on one to the nomination rounds.

After that, the boda bodas grew wings, as they say, at some stage becoming almost untouchable. Even recently, their payment of dues was suspended until their status is regularised.

In the early 2000s, attempts to reintroduce real buses in Kampala were made. But there were so many interests and so many fights erupted in the company that was meant to operate them, that the whole idea collapsed before even one bus carried a single passenger. “Taxi” drivers had vowed to pour salt in the buses’ engines but they were saved the trouble by the organisation’s premature collapse.

A few years ago, the buses finally arrived, trading under the brand Pioneer. Indeed they are pioneers because the last passenger buses plied the city routes on a regular basis in the 1970s, before the majority of Ugandans were born.

The Pioneer buses have had a bumpy ride because they soon incurred a huge tax bill with the revenue authority that they couldn’t pay. The management argued that the city authorities had not provided bus lanes as promised, so they couldn’t earn enough revenue while sitting becalmed in the traffic jam with everyone else. They were grounded for many months.

The truth is that no type of vehicle can solve Kampala’s traffic headaches until the right infrastructural investments are made. For now, a lot is spoken about it, but nothing in the league of Nairobi’s Thika highway or Dar es Salaam’s Rapid Transport System has happened yet.

Joachim Buwembo is a social and political commentator based in Kampala. E-mail: [email protected]

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