Festive season is here,thousands of people are thronging the bus stations travelling back to the countryside to celebrate Christmas with family as well as the new year.
It is the “our time to eat” for the PSVs and more so the ones doing long distances to the western and coastal regions of the country. A month ago fares to Kisumu for instance in the popular Machakos “airport” were at negotiable sh.800 and right now it stands at sh.2500 non negotiable and the tickets selling like hot cakes.
The demand has superseded the supply,too many passengers willing to travel yet no enough busses to ferry them. Nairobi Exposed through independent ground investigations,has established a dangerous trend and a major disaster waiting to explode going on at the bus terminus.
Its emerging that city’s plying buses have been channelled to Western destinations. You might have by now noticed your favourite matatu to the estate missing and wondering as to where they vanished into,well we have the answers for you. The busses which are used to hundreds of kilometres daily now are doing thousands of those and same drivers used to minutes driving daily now doing hours of that daily. Are you smelling the disaster yet.
Below are some of the buses caught at the terminus as they were loading the busses to either Kisumu,Busia destinations. These are busses that ply the city routes normally.
These are just isolated cases as NE gets to establish. Many of the 42> seaters have been adopted into this life risking get rich quick scheme. Especially Rongai and route 44 have greatly been affected.
Previously accidents on the Nairobi-Western route many have been linked to drivers who are less qualified and lacking experience to do the long distances,they sleep along the way due to exhaustion. One driver whom we talked to and sought anonymity reveals to as to how things have been going on,”I have no otherwise but I need to make it to Busia and come back tonight so that tomorrow morning again we go back,honestly it is tiresome and most of us are used to the city and myself first time I drove,didn’t have any idea where I was headed,never been to Busia before but I was being directed by the conductor,but we can’t say no,the boss has the last word” said the driver to NE.
These busses are not licenced to ply these routes but only within the city. However,they still manage to get away with it,how? Thanks to the ever present corruption amongst the traffic police officers along the route,these drivers will get through past all estimated 15 police checking points easily.
Imagine of a situation where the driver hits the road in the morning to Busia,has to drive back so as to carry more people tomorrow morning. No resting in between,the passengers he will be driving tomorrow unknown to them will be putting their lives on the hands of a fatigued,exhausted driver who never rested previous day and obviously previous days. It doesn’t need rocket science to figure out that this is a disaster waiting to happen.
As Christmas and new year celebrations continues to catch up,many people will throng the “airport” to travel home unknowingly putting their lives on the line,thanks to inexperienced drivers and a corrupted police traffic officers who seemingly are aware of this scam but are instead taking their share and pushing the rest into a freezer.
Hopefully,we won’t run a fatal follow up to this story.
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