Mozambique: Thousands of eggs incinerated in Maputo - Lusa
FILE: Road to Goba. [File photo: Bycicle Tours]
On 1 November, the Kingdom of ESwatini increased the cross-border fee for freight and passenger road transportation from US$5.5 (80 Rands) to US$100 (about 1,500 Rands).
In conversation yesterday with ‘Carta de Moçambique’, the President of the Association Mozambique, South Africa and Associates (MOSATA), Ambrósio Lopes, explained that Eswatini has imposed the rate hike in retaliation for the rate of US$100 imposed by the Mozambican state.
Lopes explained, however, that Mozambique only charges US$100 for heavy goods vehicles, exempting from payment all private passenger transportation vehicles and all private light vehicles. “But they charge everyone, which harms us passenger carriers a lot,” Lopes, himself a sector operator, complained.
Faced with the prohibitive amount, he continued, and after unsuccessfully trying to contact the Mozambique Ministries of Transport and Communications and of Foreign Affairs, MOSATA met its ESwatini counterpart INTERSTAT a few days ago to try and resolve the issue.
In addition to the agreement establishing reciprocal passenger transhipment between the associations on the Goba border, Lopes said that, at the meeting, INTERSTAT declared its intention to reduce the fee from US$100 to US$20.4 (300 Rands).
Mozambican transporters still however consider the amount prohibitive, and say they are accumulating losses as a consequence. According to the President of the Tuva Taxis Association (ATT), Leonardo Timba, who is also a carrier, an operator carries an average of eight passengers to Eswatini for 100 Rands each (equivalent to US$6.8 USD). From that 800 Rands (US$45.4), Timba continued, the operator must subtract 300 Rands for each border crossing, leaving him 500 Rands (US$34.3).
“From that, when you subtract fuel and driver costs, nothing is left. So it would be fair for us to increase [the fare] from 80 Rands to 100 Rands,” he says.
The charge imposed by neighbouring E-Swatine harms dozens of operators and is a disruption to hundreds of passengers, especially those traveling heavily laden, who must trek from one bus to another when they cross the border.
As we have learned, those carriers work in groups in associations. In addition to the 18-member MOSATA, which operates from the Downtown Terminal, and the 16-member ATT (Tuva Taxis Association), which operates from the Junta Terminal, Timba said there are six more associations, the number of whose members he cannot estimate.
In the face of the damage caused over the last three weeks, the president of MOSATA said yesterday that operators were continuing to lobby the E-Swatine branch to influence the authorities there to further reduce the rate to a maximum of 100 Rands, and that his counterpart would comment today (Thursday 21/11).
“If not, you know the saying, ‘Where elephants fight, the grass suffers’,” he said. In order to meet operating costs, operators are committed to raising the ticket price to 120 Rands (US$ 8.16).
The problem persists because of the lack of collaboration between national government in solving the problem diplomatically.
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