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Misbah Muzeyen runs a vegetable and fruits shop in
the northern suburb of Addis Abeba. To fill his
shanty store with fresh supplies, he wakes up before
sunrise at about 6:00am every single day. He has to
do this because he needs to get to Atkilt Tera, a
vegetable hub in Piassa, the centre most part of the
city, in a bid to get the best quality and juicy
fruits that satisfy his customers.
On Wednesday, May 13, he was standing at the edge of
the main road desperately looking for a minibus
taxi, which he could not find.
“I don’t know how I am going to get along with
this,” said the 23-year old Misbah, extremely
disappointed.
It was after trekking for half an hour that he
decided to catch a taxi, which was nowhere to be
found. In fact, he woke up an hour earlier than the
usual time he set his alarm.
This is because it came to his attention that the
white minibuses with number plates from the Oromia
Regional State would no longer be ferrying
passengers to and from the mid parts of the city.
The Addis Abeba Transport Bureau banned the white
minibuses from rendering transport services in the
metropolis on April 23. The bureau justifies the ban
with the consequent lack of adequate transport
services in Oromia.
“After all, the law does not allow them to work in
Addis Abeba,” said Junedin Sado, the minister of
Transport and Communications, at a press conference
he held at his office on Thursday, May15, 2008.
A regulation the Ministry of Transport and
Communications issued in 1993 stipulates that all
transport service providers should work in the
territory where they are given their licenses.
However, until recently, the white minibuses
especially from Oromia, have been streaming in the
metropolis along with the white and blue mini buses
of Addis, which are struggling to cope with the
transport needs of the city.
The latter are now abusing the relatively easily
found commuters, especially at peak times, charging
an above the tariff fare. In most cases, even
boarding these minibuses is not an easy task, a
common sight in the city is the pushing and shoving
of commuters desperate to get to their destinations
on time. These transport blues have added to the
many woes that residents of the metropolis face.
“Taxis have now become a bone of contention,” says
Tewodros Ayalew, a college student who uses them
every day.
Following the issuance of the new directive, the
existing mismatch between the number of transport
service providers and seekers have glaringly become
apparent. While the number of passengers has
increased, city dwellers who line up for a long
period of time has remarkably peaked, even during
working hours.
A mixture of ownership structures, of which public
and private operators are predominantly contenders
for business, provides urban transport in Addis
Abeba. As such, the modes of transport include
public buses, minibuses and taxis, while walking and
animal carts dominate the periphery.
Currently, taxis, city buses and private cars
altogether cover 40pc of urban mobility, that is
public buses (26pc), contract taxis (70pc), and
private cars (four per cent) while 60pc of urban
mobility is covered on foot, according to statistics
from the City Transport Bureau.
There are over 14,000 minibuses and 460 Anbessa city
buses that daily transport 1.2 million and 450,000
passengers respectively. Transport is also provided
by 400 supportive medium buses, which have a
capacity of handling 94,000. Travelers, and 194 midi
buses transport 68,094 passengers daily on Addis
Abeba’s routes. Collectively, they ferry over 1.6
million passengers each day.
These modes of transportation had been supported by
the white minibuses that sneaked into the metropolis
from neighbouring regional states in order to
satiate that market that they thought has not been
effectively utilized. By the estimations of the
transport ministry, these trans-regional taxis are
close to 2,000. These taxis were addressing the
needs of the city dwellers who now reminisce their
value.
Understandably, the white taxi drivers who crossed
the regional borders in search of better revenues
are not happy with the latest decision.
“I am still waiting for a passenger since I parked
this cab at dawn,” Wasihun Teferi a white minibus
chauffeur bemoans, pointing at the number of
minibuses waiting their turn at Legehar.
Without permits to drive passengers from Addis to
Adama (Nazareth), he was expecting passengers to
fill his car, having turned a deaf hear to the
directives of the authorities.
“That is the only choice I have to furnish the owner
with the 160 Br he expects daily,” he told
Fortune. “Or else I will have nothing to fill my
belly with.”
He is one of many that are struggling to survive
amidst soaring consumer prices as well as high
prices of fuel.
Following the grave global fuel price hikes, which
subsequently made the government slap a price
increase, the taxi drivers seem to have set out to
offset their additional costs by doing what ever
they can. While the regional ones have moved to the
metropolis en masse, the local ones are
serving customers by cutting long voyages into
pieces as much as they like.
After a barrel of oil hit the 127-dollar mark
globally last week, confounding the ban on white
minibuses, the ailing city transport coverage has
worsened, giving room for the city taxi drivers to
decide where and how to go.
This is what sent Misbah into disappointment.
He can no longer get a taxi that takes him directly
to Piassa without having to stop and turn back when
the driver and his assistant - commonly called Weal
- feel like it.
Misbah used to catch one of the white taxis not far
from his village before. His trip back to his shop
is even worse.
“This is what my life has come to be,” Misbah
lamented, offloading a sack full of vegetables that
was difficult to maneuver.
Authorities, however, believe that the city is not
facing a shortage of service providers.
“The problem arose due to the limited road network
that we have,” said Junedin.
The road coverage in the city currently stands at
8.3pc; close to three fold lower than the
internationally accepted standard of 25pc. There are
990Kms of asphalted roads in the city, which the
Addis Abeba City Roads Authority envisages to
upgrade to 1,300Kms by 2009/10.
Junedin’s assertion probably refers to his
ministry’s efforts to alleviate the shortage of
public transport in the city.
Following the decision of the MoTC two years ago to
procure 2,000 medium sized buses with a capacity to
carry between 22 and 27 passengers, 500 have been
bought from a Chinese company, HIGER, in order to
address the acute problems of transport blues in the
capital.
HIGER was in fact the third bidder when the
Authority short listed four Chinese manufacturers in
May 2007. Mudan Autombiles SC Ltd. and FAW Coach Bus
Co. Ltd. were recommended in the first and second
places, respectively.
However, following a lack of consensus with the
first two, officials of the MoTC and the Federal
Transport Authority had to start fresh negotiations
with HIGER on the prices of the first 500 buses and
the conditions under which the payments would be
made. They both reached an agreement in Addis Abeba
on June 24, 2007. With a credit scheme facilitated
by the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), 400 of the
500 buses have now come to Addis Abeba.
“Out of these buses, 304 are in the process of being
sold,” stated the MoTC.
The price of these minibuses is 332,000 Br. A single
buyer can only buy a minimum of two and a maximum of
30 buses with a payment that would be due in five
years.
The owners of HIGER buses are also complaining like
the white minibus owners coming from other regions.
Their reason for complaint is different though.
The City Transport Bureau has issued a new
regulation that restricts HIGER drivers from
functioning outside of their placements.
“We can no longer drive in the city freely,” said
Afework Tesfaye, a HIGER bus driver. “Our daily
revenue has drastically declined.”
The owners are expected to pay their debts to the
CBE in five years and this, according to them, would
be an arduous task.
Both the commuters and the service providers
currently have nothing to be happy about.
“The coming administration has to find a lasting
solution to this problem,” says Tewodros.
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