Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Very High Bus Fares,Poor Services.

Zimbabwe has been shrugged by economic hardships. Once been the jewel and bread basket of Africa,now a beggar.
One really wanders what happened to the jewel that we inherited in 1980. I hasten to share with you along the lines of transport problems.
The economy of Zimbabwe has been traditionaly agrobased.Unfortunately after farm seizure and invasions by bogus war veterans,many people are now service providers and very few producers if any.
Either one starts off by diagonising the transport problems or pathogenesis it to understand what exactly went wrong with our transport services.
A journey from Mutare to Harare is only 264km long and has over the years been covered in three and half hours by public transport. Buses charge exhobitant fares of $220million and have not taken less than 7hours since January 2008.
with due respect readers,allow me to share with you my worst experience onthe roads with public transport.For atleast four times now,i boarded a bus from Mbare to Mutare.On March 21,i got into the bus before six in the morning anticipating to be in Mutare by nine. A bus in which i was travelling had to get loaded before going for fuel queue.Filling stations open at eight in the morning and long distance buses would have queued all night long. When the tank is full the bus leaves for the garage where the tank gets emptied half way.The bus left Harare around 1230hours and reached Mutare at 1700hours.Two weeks ago it had taken me three and half hours and costed $70million from Harare to Mutare.That day , it costed me $220million and took me 11hours.
The problem of hiking busfares willy nilly has also caught up with commuter omnibuses which now charge as much as $30million for 3 to 4killometre distances.
Transport operators argue that diesel is very expensive and scarce so they charge prices that will cushion their businesses.There is no fuel at pump price in Zimbabwe.