African news
On Tuesday’s January 30, lots of pedestrians strenuously covered up distances in the capital due to only few public transport vehicles moving about.
The private commercial vehicles couldn’t be seen on the streets of Freetown for hours in the morning.
It was only after four hours before some commercial vehicles started moving.
The pedestrians say government had ordered ‘poda-poda’ and private drivers not to use the Bai Bureh new road route within the capital but to use the old narrowed road.
On this, one of the affected persons, a senior teacher at an Arabic school noted in anger: “We really don’t understand why must a passenger asked to pay Le 10 from Eastern police to Calaba Town. That is too much; and a wicked act to the least.”
The situation on Tuesday was commented on by a group of other affected persons.
And because there were not many vehicles on the capital’s main road yesterday except few ‘kekes’ (tri-cycles); people of all walks of life ( public workers, business men and women, students) toiled the streets without vehicles picking them up at some bus take-off points like Waterloo highway, Calaba Town, Wellington, Eastern Police.
“I had to be late for class today because there were few vehicles on the streets,” remarked a student at a public school.
The government buses which are brought from China to ease transportation difficulty were unveiled to run as transport on Tuesday.
But the drivers will be charging passengers each a fare of Le 10 after three days free ride expires.
The public fare is however being despised by a number of Sierra Leoneans.
“We are going to onboard on the private commercial buses instead. Why would the government tag so much a high price on the buses we had hoped will ease our struggles on catching up vehicles every day?” asked a man.
Others had hoped that the new buses, roughly accounting forty-nine, will be evenly distributed by districts level with Freetown and Waterloo standing to get at least fifteen new buses.
But the expectations of residents in the capital and Waterloo have been dashed completely, as only Calaba Town is identified as the destination for the buses but with only few.
As it stands no one knows whether the provinces or not are going to be allocated with many buses.
“We had expected more buses to be allocated to Waterloo-Freetown road transport service, considering the many constraints we are facing daily to get commercial vehicles,” said a passenger on Tuesday.