KOMBI drivers have been urged to use designated ranks instead of provoking police officers to act in an unorthodox manner that takes people’s lives or leaves casualties, commuter operators’ representatives have said.
MOSES MATENGA
This followed a number of accidents in Harare’s central business district (CDB) that have seen serious injuries and fatalities including the recent tragedy of three-year-old Neil Tanatswa Mutyora of Harare’s Rugare suburb.
On Wednesday this week, a woman was knocked down on the same spot where young Mutyora met his death.
Greater Harare Association of Commuter Omnibus Operators secretary-general Cosmas Mbojani said the association was disturbed by the high numbers of fatal accidents involving kombis in the city centre and blamed this on non-compliant operators.
“We are saddened and confused as an association of compliant operators that encourage our drivers to work from designated ranks,” Mbojani said.
“There are others who don’t want to associate with us and they don’t even care about their drivers’ conduct on the roads.”
He added: “Lack of enforcement to some extent is making things worse, the enforcers are too many in town, but what we have discovered is that the drivers do not have required documents to drive, they do not have papers and can’t stay on ranks hence the spend all day fleeing from the police.”
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Mbojani urged law enforcement agencies to change their tactics in dealing with errant commuter omnibus drivers, especially in the CBD.
“We have heard senior police officers discouraging barbaric acts on the roads as it endangers people’s lives, but the junior officers continue to smash windscreens of the kombis, it shows they (seniors) are not being obeyed by their juniors,” he said.
Some Harare residents said owners of commuter omnibuses should be prosecuted over the accidents as they also hire unlicensed or underage drivers.
“The police are simply enforcing the law and it is incumbent upon the arrested commuter driver to stop and allow the due process of the law,” one resident Paul Masiiwa said.
“You cannot expect the police to ignore and let the commuter driver speed off.”
He said most of the kombi drivers were unlicensed and that was the main reason they sped away from the police upon being asked to stop.
