HAS GOVT REALLY BACKED DOWN ON PASSENGER TRANSPORT SAGA?

While public passenger road transport operators might be heaving a sigh of relief at the wake of government’s decision to put on hold its plans to transform the industry that does not necessarily mean fait accompli and that they should rest on their laurels.

The operational words here on government’s plans to replace kombis and midi-buses with coaches/buses on long haul routes are on hold or suspension, which both means a temporary measure and not finality. Whether or not government initially sought to test the waters, as the saying goes, by unilaterally declaring its intentions is a matter for conjecture. But of certainty is that government did not expect the kind of hostile reception and opposition to its transformation strategy from public passenger road transport operators.
If my suspicions are correct, government’s decision on this issue is a political one, which means it cannot be challenged.

In such cases government does not require consultations and consensus, a contradiction to the leadership apt stated position that it subscribes to dialogue and consensus of the people.    
Ostensibly government’s strategy, according to Makhosini Mndawe, Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, as quoted by the press, is to address overtrading, congestion, safety and reliability, among other issues. Paradoxically some of these challenges, such as overtrading and congestion, appear to be self-inflicted. It is after all the Road Transportation Board (RTB), a department within the same ministry, which is responsible for regulating and licencing of public passenger road transport. If management is doing things right while leadership is doing the right things, to quote Peter Drucker (American writer, professor and management consultant – 1909 – 2005), the RTB is evidently lacking in both.

This essentially means the RTB is incapable of simply managing the regulation and issuing of licences while the ministry has failed to provide effective leadership to the RTB.
These inherent weaknesses are now being visited on public passenger transport operators initially without even giving them an ear.
The challenges of safety and reliability also cannot be wholly blamed on public passenger road transport operators. Finding solutions to these challenges is therefore a shared responsibility between government and the operators, albeit the former carries the heavier burden. On government’s part is the Public Works and Transport Ministry that is responsible for developing and improving the roads infrastructure requisite to eliminating or minimising accidents as well as ensuring road safety along with the police as the agency charged with operationalising road traffic laws to ensure the safety of passengers.

On their part operators should be able to provide decent and roadworthy vehicles as well as adequately trained and disciplined drivers and conductors. But operators would pass the blame onto government, the ministry to be specific, for failing to upgrade the country’s roads network, a prerequisite of the trajectory to First World status come 2022, to minimise tear and wear not to speak of accidents involving public passenger road vehicles.
The question boggling the mind is why government neglected to consult with the stakeholders in the first instance instead of trying to dictate solutions to the challenges, real or otherwise. This indeed cast doubts if the so-called challenges were and are the real reasons behind government’s stated mission.
As I see it, what we have been told are the motivations for government’s transformation agenda may not be the real underlying reasons.

If they were there is certainly no reason why government had not approached and engaged the stakeholders initially. Government’s actions are synonymous with someone having a hidden agenda that seeks to disadvantage, not empower, the other party. As it turns out the initial resolute position of Public Works and Transport Minister Lindiwe Dlamini somewhat went to lengths to confirm a hidden agenda although she later toned down. She had initially declared unequivocally that nothing and no one would stop the transformation from proceeding as planned.

This suggested that behind the transformation was massive political support and that, therefore, this was one of those political decisions that are routinely taken against conventional wisdom, such as the purchase of a Fokker 100 aircraft that was the death knell for the Royal Swazi National Airways Corporation against popular public opinion, that ultimately are ruinous to this country and its economy.
Consequently, if the proposed transformation enjoys the kind of political support that has carried such irrational decisions, then nothing will stop it from going ahead. And this has in fact been indicated by both the PS as well as Minister Dlamini. The proposed transformation might as well be cast in stone but to what cost to the fragile and superficial peace that the leadership often boasts about as definitive of the Swazi nation. We are watching and waiting to see if government’s peace offering is genuine or just camouflage to deprive the economic means of public passenger road transport operators to eke out a living.

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