Public Transport in Kenya; the boundaries of service and insanity
With a total of 98,000 PSVs and 302,000 commercial vehicle license holders, can the Kenyan public transport service be restored to sanity?
In the month of December 2017 alone, road accidents claimed a total of 300 deaths. In a bid to curb this road carnage, the government announced that all PSV and truck drivers must get retrained. This retraining would, the Secretary of Transport stated, include medical checkups for conditions that might affect the drivers’ ability to conduct themselves safely on the roads.
Organized chaos
The Kenyan public transport service is one of those things that many of us would love to live without, but cannot. On the one hand, majority of middle to low income households do not have family cars. Matatus and buses literally ensure that the core of the Kenyan labor force, and therefore the economy, keeps moving. In some circles, the matatu culture has been hailed as a unique hallmark of Kenya’s urban identity.
On the other hand, matatus and buses are what one of my colleagues aptly described as ‘noisy, dirty and crime-prone contraptions’. Their customer service ethic is non-extent, their conduct on the roads reckless. Ask any private driver what the source of their frustration on the road is and their first (angry) response is likely to be ‘those pesky matatus’. Motor bike taxi riders have now joined matatus as a mark of disorder and flaunting of traffic laws. On several occasions I’ve sat with foreigners who are new on Kenyan roads, and watched them literally gag – some in horror and other in amazed disbelief – at the impunity with which PSVs navigate our roads.
A point of comparison
A few years ago I was in Dubai. A Kenyan who has lived in the city for a couple of years was showing us around town. We were headed back home at 3 am. The roads were clear. We came to an intersection. He stopped. We sat there for several minutes – with no other car (or cop!) in sight. We just sat there and waited for the light to change before taking a turn. I was thoroughly amazed. I have never seen that sort of thing in Nairobi. I mentioned that to him. He said that if he ran the light, traffic authorities would contact him the very next morning (about 5 hours from then!) to let him know what his fine was. I wondered whether the cameras on Nairobi roads work, let alone having a service authority so swift, and technology so apt as to tag a car at 3 am, register its owner and their current contact and have him paying a fine by 8 am! That’s how things work in an ideal system. That is not the Kenyan system.
Because we got independence at the same time, Kenya’s and Singapore’s development are constantly juxtaposed. This is usually NOT a proud moment for Kenya’s progress. When it comes to transport, it is said we have only just gotten where Singapore was in 1965! In the 60s, this Asian country’s transport system was characterized by multiple small scale players in a fragmented service delivery. Today, it boasts an efficient mass rapid system of buses, trains, ferries and taxis. This was a result of a very deliberate investment by the government.
What ails the industry – within and without?
It is not until the Michuki rules that Kenyans had a glimpse of what order in this industry could look like. But that was short lived – the seat belts are no longer existent, speed governors not a permanent fixture and the number of passengers not enforced.
It has been said that the matatu industry has resisted attempts by the government to enforce discipline. Critics have gone as far as to describe owners and operators as ‘thugs’. One cannot dismiss the claim that a large part of the failure to restructure this industry is attributed to powerful politicians’ business interests.
But in as much as this disorder seems to ‘work’ (people get ferried to work and as it’s an industry that generates employment and taxes), I wonder if it comes at too high a price. For starters, the cost in human life cannot be overstated. Secondly, statistics show that Kshs.50 million is lost every day due to traffic jams in Nairobi. This translates to billions of shillings in annual losses due to wasted productivity.
The chairman of the Matatu Owners Association is naturally defensive of his industry. He is quoted here saying that the biggest problem is not Matatus’ conduct on the roads but our pattern of life, “We report to work at eight, children report to school at eight, businesses open at eight. All these activities end at five, leading to clogged roads every morning and evening.”
He also reckons traffic jams in Nairobi could be resolved by curtailing private car owners’ access to the CBD. As for the anarchy, he says, “public transport was for a long time informal and free for all. It was like a carcass attracting scavengers. This gave it a bad name.”
He pointed out that a few controls have been put in place (such as vetting those who want to join the industry and the fact that they can only join through a Sacco). He however admitted that existing gaps in vetting at the entry level have led to more unplanned players, attracting (corrupt) policemen and criminal gangs (who unlawfully control routes and demand fees from operators).
In the same interview, he attributed PSV accidents to cut-throat competition – revenue is diminished due to saturation, which in turn makes operators rush to rake in as much as they can. Other challenges he cited included high taxes (which means an operator cannot, for example, afford to leave the CBD without passengers) and increased insurance overheads (for example, a comprehensive annual cover for a 33 sitter comes at a whooping Kshs.650,000).
Public transport customers held at ransom
Unfortunately, this is not the sort of business that consumers can freely say, “I have had enough! I am going to take my business elsewhere”. As a matter of fact, most passengers do not even have the confidence to speak out against life-threatening situations like speeding, let alone noise and unprofessional conduct. When it comes to PSVs, we seem to have resigned to our fate, sometimes resorting to dealing with it with a sense of humor. The famous Majibu za Makanga is a running joke among Kenyans, borne of matatu touts’ sarcastic, off-color and rude replies to customers’ inquiries. In a service industry, this sort of thing shouldn’t be a joke.
We are not belittling the idea that the government has seen it fit to retrain PSV operators. Authorities have a role to play in tackling corruption and crime that is the bane of this huge revenue earner. It also has the mandate to think ahead and move us closer towards a 21st century public transport system. On the government’s part, the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) is a good start. On the other hand, cheaper app-order taxi services have added to Kenyans’ options.
Moving forward, the existence of wider train system that caters to basic transport needs for Kenyans of all walks of life would eliminate the matatu industry’s monopoly, giving the consumer options and perhaps forcing PSV owners to better their services. To use the Matatus Owners Association Chairman’s words, perhaps they will find ways to stop being ‘carcasses that attract scavengers’. Can we hope for a day where our roads (and sanity) are not beholden to an anarchist system characterized by noisy, dirty and reckless contraptions?
Rachel is a prolific Kenyan writer, with over 15 years’ experience in the print media industry and has been part of editorial teams in major publications. Her specialties are health, community development, children and women’s affairs, global current affairs and lifestyle. She currently runs a content and creative consultancy outfit and holds an almost full-time gig at Kenya’s leading Newspaper, The Nation. When she is not creating content for her clients and has finally caught up with newspaper deadlines, she can be found at home reading or trying to (finally) work on her ‘Great African Novel’.