To address the shortage of public transport vehicles, the government has come up with a policy that will require operators to bid for routes they wish to operate in. The policy will take effect from August.

The public has in the past faulted the government over its failure to regulate the mini-bus operators who have been blamed for the long queues during evening rush hour, causing friction between transporters, the government and passengers.

Kigali is the most hit by this shortage, and the government had promised quick measures before the end of this year.

Venantie Umuhire, a regular public transport user told Rwanda Today that some mini-bus operators decide to park their vehicles or take them for a wash at peak hours.

“We don’t know where these buses go to during peak hours, queuing is very annoying especially when going to work, and it is even worse when the buses are not coming,” she said.

On the other hand, operators claim rush hours are of no benefit to their businesses, and decide to park until off-peak hours.

According to Peter Nkundira, a mini-bus driver operating on Remera-Town route, there’s more traffic jam during rush hour leading to burning of fuel and a waste of time on the roads.

“It is made worse by the fact that we only have passengers going out of town. We are then forced to drive the empty buses back into town to pick more passengers. There are more losses than gains in those hours,” said the driver.

Although the government admits a number of challenges will have to be addressed to overcome the shortage, it blames transport agencies and co-operatives for lack of self-regulation.

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According to Emmanuel Asaba Katabarwa, the head of transport regulation department at the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA), there are cross-cutting challenges facing transport and environment agencies, and even travellers themselves.

Mr Katabarwa added that the government seeks to have a unified transport structure by first asking transporters to form co-operatives for easy regulations, but there are still those who operate without licences, and do not belong to any co-operative.

“Individual operators are very hard to control, they only care about money. Once they are all in co-operatives it will be easier to regulate them. We are yet to approve the final database of the co-operatives,” he said.

Early this year the authority announced that only those public operators who belong to a co-operative will be licensed. Mr Katabarwa further noted that after a unified structure is in place, then the government will now contract those in co-operatives or companies to operate in specific routes.

“We are yet to embark on that programme, probably in two months time. It will therefore mean that in case of passengers being stranded, we will be able to call the operators responsible for an explanation. We hope this will solve the problem,” Mr Katabarwa added.

Although, the government in this fiscal year has reduced taxes for the importation of public vehicles of more than 25 passengers and 50 passengers, there has been no notable increase in the number of public buses in the country compared with the number of commuters.

According to transport officials there are over 1,000 public transport vehicles including vans carrying less than 25 passengers and mini buses carrying more than 30 passengers.