More on chairperson of Maputo Bus Company resigning – AIM report

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More on chairperson of Maputo Bus Company resigning – AIM report

6:30 CAT | 16 May 2017

The chairperson of the board of directors of the Maputo municipal bus company, EMTPM, Iolanda Wane, has resigned, following severe criticisms of the company’s management made by President Filipe Nyusi and Transport Minister Carlos Mesquita.

According to a report in Monday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Mediafax”, Wane, who had been chairperson since October 2011, sent her letter of resignation to the Mayor of Maputo, David Simango, on 8 May. The following day, Simango accepted her resignation, but Wane will remain in office until 10 July. By that time, Simango should have found a replacement.

Nyusi visited EMTPM on 13 April and was dismayed when he found a cemetery of buses. He was faced with the carcasses of dozens of vehicles, some of them off the roads simply because they did not have replacement tyres or batteries.

After a discussion with EMTPM mechanics, Nyusi said “You are telling me that more than 30 buses are stopped because you can’t solve problems of tyres and batteries. A further 80 buses are on the way (from China), and by December the number will rise to 300. But I see we will have the same problems”.

At an ensuing meeting of the Consultative Council of the Transport Ministry, Nyusi said the problem was not just a shortage of buses. There was also a problem of attitude. He was sure that if the carcasses of broken down EMTPM buses were sold off, private operators would soon put them back on the roads.

“In the hands of private businessmen, all those buses can circulate”, he said. “The problem is us – we relax because we will always receive our wages”.

Nyusi warned the managers of public transport companies that, although transport is a social service, that fact does not justify the problems he had seen. “The workshops of the public transport companies are becoming graveyards of buses”, he said. “We are going to import more buses, but it will always be money lost”.

Wane’s problems worsened on 5 May, when Mesquita visited EMTPM. He found that 19 of the paralysed buses were about to return to the roads, after Maputo Port and the railway company CFM had helped provide batteries and tyres.

But the Minister was amazed to find several other buses halted, not because there was anything mechanically wrong with them, but because they had not been refueled.

Mesquita was irritated that buses should be stopped for want of a few litres of diesel, and pointed out that at this time of day (early evening) there are passengers at the bus stops trying to go home, and several of the buses that should be taking them are just waiting for fuel.

Source: AIM