Africa-Press – Eswatini. Bus owners have resolved to refrain from parking their vehicles and to continue working during shutdowns in the public transport industry.
The resolution was taken yesterday during a meeting held by bus owners at the Manzini Library.
This after the bus owners failed to come up with a resolution to counteract government’s plan of revoking their permits and introducing their own vehicles if public transport owners parked their vehicles.
The meeting was convened after the prime minister last Thursday, when delivering the end of year address, stated that if the public transport operators and workers continued to park their vehicles and frustrating operations in the country, government was ready to deploy permanent public transport vehicles to avoid the interruptions.
Following the PM’s statement, some public transport owners were of the view that government was on a mission to take over their businesses.
Chairman of Buses Association, Velaphi Sihlongonyane, said they failed to come up with a resolution during the meeting because they were caught in between adhering to government’s requirements and that of the ‘faceless commander’.
Sihlongonyane said by heeding to government’s directive to operate despite an order from the ‘faceless commander’ to park their vehicles, they placed their employees’ lives at risk and their vehicles in danger of being torched.
He said they were now scared because some of their colleagues’ vehicles were torched allegedly by the ‘faceless commander’s agents after defying an order for them to park.
Further, Sihlongonyane said the worst part was that according to their insurance policies, no payment would be made to a public transport operator, who deliberately exposed the vehicle to danger, knowing very well that by so doing, he would be placing it in danger of being torched.
He said government, on the other hand threatened to revoke their permits and provide permanent public transport on the country’s roads.
Given the two scenarios, he said they were caught in between a rock and a hard place because government did not give an assurance that they would be compensated if their vehicles were torched.
Sihlongonyane said even though they understood that they were classified under essential service providers, they could not deliberately take their vehicles to be torched.
Further, he said government officers would park their vehicles and stay at home in fear of being injured during the shutdowns yet government was instructing them to place their vehicles in danger by reporting to work during such periods.
“The most painful thing is that during the total shutdowns most people stay at home and as such, there are no customers to service on the country’s roads.
If only government can provide a subsidy, since the public transport industry is regulated and we can’t charge prices as we please, then we can be assured that even if there are no customers we will not incur losses,” he said.
Sihlongonyane said they finally agreed that operators should not park their vehicles during the shutdowns as per government’s instructions, however, each operator should come up with a strategy to protect his/her vehicle.
Addressing what they would do if their employees refused to report for work on grounds that they feared for their lives, he said it would be upon the operators to drive the buses on their own or not.
He said the sad part was that not all public transport operators know how to drive their buses and those who were able to drive them, a very few would be bold enough to risk their lives.
“Another thing is that we have public transport operators, who own more than one public transport vehicle and therefore, even if they know how to drive them, they cannot drive all of them at the same time.
So by default even if they do drive one, the others would be parked,” he said.
Sihlongonyane said they were more than willing to work but government was not willing to listen to their grievances.
He emphasised that what pained them the most was that this was politics and yet they were not politicians but were businesspeople who do not understand the language of politics.
They claimed that they were not responsible for parking the vehicles but rather there were certain individuals who were not part of the sector who were behind the act.
The Chairperson of the National Road Transport Council (NRTC) Magesi Dlamini said the council had not yet met to deliberate on a resolution regarding government’s stance to nationalise public transport in the event they continued to park their vehicles.
He said the meeting had not been convened due to the festive holidays as well as the ongoing Incwala ceremony.
However, he stated that the meeting would be convened in January.
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