After doing all the stuff I wanted to do in Mzuzu, I have to go back home to Mzimba. I know there is a national bus company bus passing Mzimba by 11am. It must be available around 9am. So I find it, but a minibus caller is telling people not to get in but to get a minibus. Even the conductor tells me not to get in at the time. Now the question is: do I have no right to get home through a bus of my choice and get there seated like everybody else traveling in these buses? There are minibuses but they are adamant to their ways as well, you get in and come out with your suit torn out from the chair modifications, you have to argue with conductors on being seated like a pack of animals. And what of the cost? Who wants to spend more when the can spend less? The bus is a comfortable choice. But if I have to go home standing in preference for those going to lilongwe when there are many seats empty just because the minibus has to make a business, no! I travel my journey and should not be pushed too much from what I chose to travel in. For in most cases, my journeys are long, with many stops under a compressed timelines. So, a little detour or departure from plan is very costly indeed.
How about rebuilding the public transport system?
One of the responsibilities of the government is to provide transportation infrastructure to its people.
Private minibus and bus owners, have their own interest first at heart than that of the government and its citizens. In most cases, this has left big holes of a population which is yet unserved from the services taken up by the private sector and not fully provided by the by the government. This is the case not only in the transport sector but also in the other sectors as well. Shall we go on like this?
Looking back at organizations like the law commission, the electoral commission, the human rights commission, civil service commission, etc, how about a commission to look into issues of transport.
The bus depot is a public infrastructure it is best regulated by government. If the depot is supposed to ensure that there is a bus at a particular time going to a particular place and there is no private bus at that particular time, the bus depot is supposed to select one bus among the many private buses in good condition and assign it on that trip. In this way, private public partnership is beneficial.
If there might be other buses that travel at there own time to their own destination, then they can do with people choosing when to get in or through which bus.
This system can go down even to minibuses.
This can then allows the government to reduce risks and other complications buy partnering partnering with minibuses or buses that follow the government guidelines for public transport. Things like, unmodified minibus seats, all people seated and no one standing. Leaving within expected times.
Because the malawian public has for long wanted such a service and no one has managed to fully provide it since the desolution of shire bus lines, then they will be more than happy to use transportation that follow these guidelines as government might have wished to enforce during operation dongosolo.
Such a reform can also go through other sectors where the government partners with providers that satisfy these conditions at any level even if it means a contractual agreement so that no population is left unreached on the duties and services the government is expected to perform and are currently unreached due to the preferences of private service providers.
The road rehabilitation has worked very well with the government working with private contractors. Other sectors can learn from there.