By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
At the ‘Lorry Park’ on Bombay Street, in the east of Freetown, a long queue is building up. Passengers, wearing deep frustrations on their faces, anxiously await the next vehicle to take them to their various destinations, and eventually to Waterloo.
Some of these wary passengers have been here for several hours enduring the chill of the Harmattan wind. The situation in this car park is an epitome of several others within the city. Commercial transport owners have taken advantage of a broken system fuelled by a severe shortage of public transportation to exploit the people.
For instance, vehicles that are supposed to run between Freetown and Waterloo are prone to unexpected changes of directions owing to the half- way or two-way syndrome that has beclouded the transport sector. Bashing and snubbing of passengers by drivers is commonplace in the rush hours of the day.
As night falls at every tick of the clock, a nostalgic mood is nurtured in the commuters evidenced by intermittent waves of stampedes as they struggle to get a space in the few transports available. This often generates a chaotic atmosphere which provides a viable ground for thieves wearing the cloak of commuters.
Women are particularly at risk in this situation. Besides having to compete with their stronger male counterparts, they also fall prey of the thieves who snatch their hand bags and phones.
These are the manifestations of a haphazardly organised transport sector. Someone can own vehicle today and become a key player in the industry. The drivers take advantage of the country being anchored on a market economy structure and the transport sector being a private-sector- led investment.
Rugiatu Sesay, one of the commuters on the queue at Bombay Street, explains that drivers prefer taking only those passengers who would alight at short distance from where they board.This can be very frustrating.
“This is a very dangerous situation that has been brought upon us by drivers,” she lamented.
Unchecked
Perhaps the most frustrating thing is the realisation that this illegal act by drivers goes unchecked without any compunction for the suffering commuters.
But drivers themselves point fingers of blame at traffic police and Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority (SRSA) wardens who, they say, almost always resort to persistent harassment for minor traffic violations.
Ibrahim Kamara, who plies the east of Freetown, said as a driver you do not need to commit a traffic offence to be booked by a traffic police or warden, whom he accused of extortion.
He said they try to offset the money taken from them by the police by creating the two-way syndrome.
“If a police officer or warden deprives me of Le30, 000 for a day, I just have to charge either two or three way to recover the money,” Kamara said.
Another driver at the Lumley car park, Victor Ansumana, sounded almost the same.
“It will take a long time before the suffering ends if the right measures are not put in place,” he said.
With the divers constantly on the wrong end of dubious police tactics, it is the commuters that will continue to bear the brunt. The question that has been on the lips of many is ‘when would sanity return to the transport sector?’
Regional Representative of the Motor Drivers and General Transport Workers Union of the Western Area Branch, Bademba Barrie, admitted that the issue is a cause for concern.
“We are thinking the same way commuters think about the plight brought on them by drivers,” he said.
He disclosed to Politico that the Union was working on something to remedy the situation. He said they had secured the services of 10 retired officers of the Sierra Leone Police, in addition to the union’s own trained Traffic Marshalls who would be positioned at the 32 units [car parks] in the Western Area to monitor the situation.
“We will set up a whole unit of ex-police officers within the union to regulate traffic. We will start from Waterloo to Goodrich and later spread in the entire Freetown,” Barrie explained.
He said drivers would be arrested and prosecuted in courts of law if they were found wanting after being warned against the act.
The Western Area Drivers Union boss also had a word of caution for commuters. He said they should let the word ‘two-way’ come from the driver, and not them.
But there is little public confidence in this and rightly so, because a substantially huge number of commercial vehicles are owned by highly placed government officials who tend to use their influence on police officers whenever their drivers fall foul of the law.
Ignorance of the law
SLRSA officials told Politico that they were aware of the situation and warned that they run contrary to the relevant laws of the country.
Lamrana Jalloh, an assistant public relations officer at the Authority, said the Road Traffic Regulations of 2011 frowned at the acts of such drivers. He cited regulation 41 which reads: “Every public service vehicle...operating in the Western Area shall be conspicuously printed on the vehicle the route and destinations prescribed for it.” This provision, Jalloh said, bestowed a legal obligation on commercial drivers to convey passengers to their destinations.
Sub regulation 3 of same prescribes a fine of Le 300, 000 (three hundred thousand Leones) or a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months or both [fine and imprisonment] for any driver who flouts the provision.
Clearly the transport sector is replete with drivers who are largely ignorant of the existence of these laws.
SLRSA launched an anti-half-way campaign last year which was jointly executed alongside the drivers union. Obviously that campaign has brought little or no difference to the transport sector.
When such acts are perpetrated within the view of police officers without any consequence for the offending drivers, one wonders about the marriage between police officers and drivers which breeds a culture of impunity.
The recent report by the Citizen’s Agenda for Prosperity Coalition comes to mind. The report titled: “Critical Perspectives of Governance”, VOL.6, shed light on the corrupt nature of the police which has not only complicated life for the ordinary citizens but which has cost the government billions of Leones.
“...At least 32% of domestic revenue is lost through bribery to traffic officials. Accountable law enforcement in the transport sector will benefit all citizens; it will minimise traffic offences, lead to safer roads, better police salaries and increased confidence in the police,” a portion of the report reads.
As the two or three way system is prevalent in the transport sector and the relevant agencies gear up to go on the offensive, honest and strict enforcement is what the public demands from them so that the situation can be resolved completely.
(C) Politico 04/02/16
