Africa-Press – Eswatini. It seems like the differences between buses and kombi operators cannot be easily solved, as their plan to be equal players in the industry have failed.
The buses and kombi owners had agreed that starting from yesterday, they would charge commuters the same maximum gazetted fares.
The resolution was taken during a meeting that was attended by owners of both forms of transportation last Monday. The meeting was necessitated by the fact that on April 27, 2022, bus owners resolved that they would not charge the gazetted maximum fares.
The new gazette states that public transport vehicles servicing up to eight kilometres is to charge a maximum of E10, while those between eight and less than 50km are to charge E30.50. The maximum fare to be charged by public transport servicing an excess of 50km is E77.
In a meeting chaired by Swazi Commercial Amadoda Bus Owners Association’s Chairperson Duma Msibi, the bus owners said although they would have loved to charge the maximum fares to get enough money to pay off loans, as well as maintain their vehicles, they could not do so due to unfair competition from kombis.
He stated that they got unfair competition, in that kombis ‘rank’ almost in all the bus stations, resulting in buses getting fewer customers from the bus stations that they are permitted to load and offload at. They said this was illegal as all kombis, like buses, are supposed to ferry passengers from the platform at the bus rank instead of scouting for customers along the way.
For this, the bus owners said they were forced to retain their customers by charging them less than the maximum fares that most kombis charge. When the newly gazetted fares were effected on May 1, the bus owners unanimously agreed to add a little more than what they were already charging their customers just to cushion themselves from the increased inflation rate. The exact fares were to be discussed and decided on by operators in the different routes.
In the same meeting, there was another suggestion that buses should also charge the new gazetted fares for a while until the public’s reaction is determined, but there were objections to the effect that if customers are charged the same fares in buses and in kombis, the former might lose a lot of customers and it could take a while before they could win them back so the suggestion was thrown out the window.
In order to ensure fair competition, the bus owners said they would charge the maximum fares if their counterparts with kombis would agree to meet and discuss how the unfair competition would be stopped. Indeed, last Monday, the bus and kombi owners met as confirmed by Ambrose Dlamini, who is the chairman of the Swaziland Local Transport Association (SLTA), and Duma Msibi, on behalf of the Swazi Commercial Amadoda Bus Owners Association.
Elaborating on the agreement, Msibi said bus owners agreed to charge the maximum fares on condition that kombi operators did not load at all bus stations, but start off at the bus rank as expected. He said their counterparts were informed that if the kombis failed to do this, the agreement would be null and void. Msibi said a report that was brought to him yesterday afternoon was that kombi operators failed to honour their end of the deal.
“This means we will continue charging as we had prior agreed as bus owners. We will on Thursday meet with our counterparts owning kombis to discuss what caused them to do as agreed,” Msibi said.
Therefore, he said until Thursday, buses will continue charging lesser fares, and commuters will be notified in due course on the way forward. When asked if he was aware of this development, Dlamini said he had not received a report from the association’s executives by the time of going to print.
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