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Government has been blasted for the Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO) monopoly following transport challenges commuters faced last week.
In a statement,Christian Alliance director, Useni Sibanda said ZUPCO is failing to operate leaving children at risk of being kidnapped.
“Our concern is that the Zupco public transport is failing; and has failed. In any case, the Zupco public transport system has become a potential source of spreading COVID-19. Secondly, parents and guardians have been relying on those kombis for school runs, a service that Zupco does not offer,” he said.
“By this, July Moyo is putting our children at risk of being kidnapped for ritual purposes and to paedophiles when he says school kids should use public Zupco transport. We appeal to the President Emmerson Mnangagwa to reconsider the public transport policy and to let sanity prevail as this is causing serious disruptions to people’s lives.”
HUMAN rights groups and the clergy have also urged the government to lift a ban on private transport operators and end the monopoly as transport challenge continue to worsen.
Their statement comes at a time when social media has been awash with pictures of stranded commuters, including schoolchildren.
Recently, Moyo was in Bulawayo where he lambasted the police for allowing private kombis to operate, while also threatening to rope in the army to control errant kombi drivers.
Since then, transport challenges have been the order of the day, with students and workers being the worst affected.
However the banning of private transport operators has brought a lot of controversy on social media, twitter, as some are supporting the ban and some are against.
In a tweet from @PaidamoyoMutsv1:
“We don’t want maKombi to be back on streets, vanotikwidzira mafares every week, NO, they cause confusion on roads, going against 1 way, vachitsika vanhu mumastreets!! Zupco has stable prices.. yakaringana, pambili/pamberi ne
While MDC Alliance President Advocate Nelson Chamisa has called the ZUPCO monopoly to have caused untold sufferings as a many were left jobless.
In his tweet Advocate Chamisa said :
COMMAND TRANSPORT MUST END!
The illegal ZUPCO monopoly has;
-left many jobless.
-Brought suffering leaving many stranded or in overcrowded rickety buses & resorting to insecure open trucks.
-ZUPCO is potentially a COVID-19 super spreader but ‘Chefs’ don’t care. #BringbackKombis
Meanwhile the High Court’s decision to uphold ZUPCO monopoly was challenged by lawyer Tendai Biti and the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights but nothing has changed
On March 12, 2021, Tendai Biti tweeted:
“We were in court today arguing that a High Court decision upholding the #Zupco monopoly on public transport was unlawful .The Supreme court agreed & remitted matter back to a different judge
brought this case&we thank them for great work in defending our people”
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