Malawi’s urban transport service is shambolic to describe it best. Since the departure of Stagecoach from the scene in the early 90s, when it used to provide well-managed urban transport services through Cityline buses, urban transport service is now provided by minibuses and taxis. Their proliferation over the years has not only eased mobility challenges to a fast-moving urban generation but also, to a great extent, brought chaos to city roads.
The problem with Malawi, as a country, is that since liberalisation of the public transport business following the departure of Stagecoach, players in the sector have operated without any meaningful regulations from the government, save for the enforcement of road traffic rules and regulations by traffic police officers.
Unlike other countries, where the urban transportation business is provided and regulated by city authorities, Malawi’s is a free-for-all type of environment where anyone can just wake up and decide to put their family car on the road to operate as a taxi without any serious consequences from the authorities. This is dangerous to the travelling public as it is difficult to know which vehicle is a taxi worth taking or not.
Already, we have had reports of many taxi-related crimes such as those of passengers being robbed of their valuables. Efforts by the police to trace them have oftentimes proved futile since these vehicles are not registered to operate as taxis.
In fact, it seems like taxi operators in Malawi do not know what a taxi is. By definition, a taxi is any light vehicle with a designated place that takes a passenger from one point to another without stopping along the way to pick other passengers. Therefore, what these small vehicles are doing in the cities is not taxiing but, rather, shunting—which is illegal, according to road traffic rules and regulations, regardless of the colour of the vehicles’ number plates.
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That is why I want to ask the government to correct this anomaly by placing the urban transport business under the control of city authorities to regulate it. This is exactly what happens in other countries. To regulate this business, the city authorities need to come up with conditions operators must meet before starting business. Such conditions should include registration, issuance of a renewable operator’s licence and strict guidelines on the condition of vehicles to get rid of ragged vehicles on our roads. Any passenger vehicle that operates without meeting such conditions could be impounded and the owner fined accordingly because it shall be illegal to do so.
The second step is to introduce colour-coding and a numbering system for all passenger vehicles for easy identification. As already pointed out, it is very difficult, in the present case, to know which vehicle is a taxi or not without checking the colour of the number plate.
However, this problem could be addressed if passenger vehicles had a common identifiable colour like Yellow, which is a commonly used colour for taxis and minibuses in other countries. The numbers are given to operators during registration and help passengers to report the vehicle to police if there is any problem requiring their intervention. With this system, foreign nationals who use public transport in our cities would feel secure when moving from one place to another.
Another way to regulate urban transport is for city assemblies to have their own buses to be providing transport services to residents. In fact, cities have a social responsibility to improve living standards of residents and one way to achieve this could be by introducing buses to offer lower bus fares during peak hours from 6am to 8am and from 4pm to 6pm when people are going and coming back from work as other cities do.
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This is the best way to cushion the poor urban population from high transport costs triggered by frequent fuel price increases, which force them to cover long distances on foot sometimes.
And to manage the bus service better, city assemblies could also explore the issue of issuance of boarding cards as a modern way of ticketing for passengers. These could be valid for a specific period and used by passengers boarding their buses.
