YOUTHS AND TRANSPORT SYSTEM

By Clive Siachiyako
‘A NEGATIVE attitude towards others cannot bring you success,’ a business maxim says. Could it be the doom ousting public transport bus drivers into eternal morose when out of the driver’s seat?

Courtesy to customers is highly rated in business. It is one way of gaining credibility, which often reciprocates into more returns to the business.

However, this has never been the case when it comes to the public transport sector, especially local public transport system in Zambia. Conductors of these local route public transport buses have no time for politeness to customers.

In fact, if one wants to hear the latest insult on the market, using public transport would be the quickest way to access one. Bus conductors seem to spend millions of Kwacha on bibles of insults to ‘bless’ commuters with daily.

Whereas business experts are emphasising on politeness to customers, to public bus conductors, users of public transport are up for abuse. Courtesy is not part of their character.

At the height of this disrespectfulness to customers by bus conductors, Morgan Mweetwa a bus driver, has said the behaviour of most conductors to customers is injurious to the public transport system.

Mr Mweetwa 41 added that public transport bus drivers had ended up being treated as misfits by the public because of the kind of treatment conductors give to customers.

He suggested that there was need to introduce training schools for conductors if the public transport sector were to be appreciated by the general public.

Mr Mweetwa argued that training schools for housemaids were initiated in the country when need for the skilled workforce for house care was identified, and the same should be done to conductors.

“Public transport is cardinal in the country since most of the workforce depends of this kind of transport to and from work. These commuters need skilled and polite bus crews that will enable them start each of their working days on a good and motivating note,” Mr Mweetwa said.

He said with trained conductors on customer care on the market, bus owners should then consider employing that skilled workforce than the current case where bus drivers picked on anyone who agreed to be paid the lowest take-home.

Most of such lowest paid sporty conductors are frustrated youths who spend most of their time in various deviant activities, and most of them fail to hide it before the public especially when they differ with commuters over a shortfall in the bus fare.


Mr Mweetwa argued that most conductors start work drunk after intoxicating themselves with beer the whole night worse still after sniffing all sorts of nausea-tic enthrallers that knock their heads-off after getting their pay at the end of the day.

“What do you expect from such a character? You think a customer will be given the desired respect to customers? Never,” he concluded.

Mr Mweetwa said public transport buses where offices for bus drivers that should offer a haven of courtesy to customers same as that which they receive when they go to offices of those in formal employment.

He further urged relevant authorities to extend the law that governs drivers on drunk driving and other regulations to conductors because the environment under which public transport users find themselves was becoming dangerous every day.

Mr Mweetwa said the public transport system had to be in hands of people who respect human life and recognise customers as assets to the sector, since those users were the driving force of the sector.

He said the level of informality in the public transport sector was too much as it was putting lives of users at risk especially women. He cited the recent stubbing and consequential death of a pupil over a K500 bus fare shortfall in Lusaka as a sign of chaos in the sector that needed agent attention.

“Such actions show how far the country is in improving its human rights records. People should be educated on the importance of human life. And one way on doing it is having perpetrators punished by the law,” Mr Mweetwa recommended.

Meanwhile, Mr Mweetwa has appealed to commuters to be asking conductors when they have a shortfall in their bus fare to avoid unnecessary squabbles with them.

“Members of the public should dialogue with conductors to avoid certain embarrassments by conductors who would want to get at them by all means when they fail to pay in full. Some of the conductors drivers pick on have criminal records and are never scared of the law,” he cautioned.

Practically, Council authorities and Commuters’ Rights Association should take charge and save commuters from the perpetual abuses by conductors to ensure that people enjoy their rides even when using the public transport system as in other countries.

There should be an immediate stop to these unreasonable actions by conductors most of whom come to work after sniffing amounts of sun-soaked fermentations which make them have strong hallucinations most of times of the day.