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Photo: Luisa Nhantumbo/Lusa
Drivers in Maputo say that the proposal to stagger working hours, delaying the opening of some services, will not solve the congestion problems, calling instead for better roads and quality public transport.
“The ideal would be to propose [public passenger] transport with better quality,” Aurélio Pereira, a 56-year-old mechanic, told Lusa while waiting at the junction between Joaquim Chissano and Angola avenues, on his way to the heart of the Mozambican capital, Maputo, where he works.
He is taking his daughter to Eduardo Mondlane University and on the way he faces the usual congestion that characterises the early hours of the day in Maputo, taking up to 60 minutes from home to work. He said that the staggered working hours “won’t solve the mobility problem”.
“It’s not going to change anything,” he said, adding that the solution “would be better transport and better access routes”.
“This is chaos, I have to take my daughter to college and then go to work. It’s a hassle and I don’t think it’s going to work in the civil service either,” he lamented, before coming on.
The Mozambican government plans to stagger Maputo’s working hours, delaying the opening of large supermarkets and retailers by an hour, as well as the civil service, in order to take 55,000 passengers off the road.
READ: Mozambique: Maputo wants to delay opening of supermarkets , public services to ease congestion
According to the proposal from the Ministry of Transport and Communications, through the Maputo Metropolitan Transport Agency, which is being presented to various organisations, “around 850,000 journeys are made daily” in the capital, “of which 355,000 are by public transport and the rest by private vehicles”.
This proposal, which indicates that the capital has around 400 buses, 15 mixed vehicles and 3,000 minibuses to provide public transport, will only complicate the lives of citizens, according to 48-year-old Mário Sitoe, who faces the Mozambican capital’s traffic on a daily basis as a driver.
“It will also be complicated to change the civil service timetable,” said Sitoe, who wakes up at 5 a.m. every day to take an hour from home to work.
“What the government needs to do is organise traffic,” he said, adding that the solution is to provide better access routes in the city centre.
“It would be very good to provide public transport. The solution is also to guarantee mobility, good roads, solving the potholes that are everywhere. That’s what creates the most traffic jams and it’s complicated to get to the city,” he said, while recognising that it is becoming increasingly difficult to drive in the heart of Maputo. Tomé Bambo, an international relations technician, drives an hour to work on Maputo’s avenues every day and even foresees improvements with the measures on the table: “It would be a good alternative if the timetables were changed, it would make some people come in a bit late and others earlier.”
While waiting for the traffic lights to change, Diogo João, a 42-year-old bank employee, told Lusa that he had doubts about the effectiveness of these changes.
“I doubt it, because there are problems with access routes,” said the employee, who takes 45 minutes in traffic every day to get to the centre.
In his opinion, the problem of congestion can be solved with alternatives: “The solution would be to have public transport, more [access] routes, the few that exist, if they are in better condition, the better.” Gabriel Malipa, a 48-year-old anthropologist, is another of the thousands who face the capital’s traffic on a daily basis, taking 40 minutes from home to work, and believes that staggered working hours will improve mobility: “There needs to be this reduction.”
The proposal for staggered working hours foresees large supermarkets opening at 09:00, an hour later than at present, and the same for the retail trade. In the civil service, the proposal is to delay the start of work in the capital by one hour, from 07:30 to 08:30, with the closing also taking place one hour later, at 16:30.
“The staggering of working hours could cause a decrease in passengers in the morning of around 55,000 people in just one hour’s difference,” points out the government’s proposal.
The measure would make it possible to “reduce the peak period, especially the morning peak”, as well as overcrowding on means of transport and “congestion, stress and accidents”, as well as increasing “commercial speed on the network”, with “an impact on reducing operating costs”, reducing waiting times for public transport at peak times and relieving the “concentration of passengers at stops and terminals”.
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