By Alex Ikambi – KANERE Guest Writer, February 2021
Approaches to the fight against COVID-19 have had their fair share of successes and flops.
On 28 February 2020, the President of the Republic of Kenya issued Executive Order 2 through the State House registry. This directive established the National Emergency Response Committee to upscale and coordinate the nation’s preparedness and response to the coronavirus. One mandate of this committee was to conduct impact assessment and mitigation strategies to prevent the spread of the virus. Months later, KANERE investigates how some of the measures have performed: in particular, in the public transport sector in the city of Nairobi.
The public transport sector was identified as especially high risk with regards to controlling the spread of COVID-19. Charles Hinga, the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure, Housing, Urban Development and Public Works, and a member of the committee, issued a raft of measures aimed at reducing viral spread in this sector.
The measures required all public transport vehicles to be disinfected after every journey, all passengers to wear face masks and sanitize their hands upon boarding, and all vehicles to limit capacity to 60 percent. It also mandated the use of mobile money for fares and the tracking of passenger records to allow for contact tracing.
Jennifer Musyokiis a matatu conductor who plies her trade along the popular Town-Ongata Rogai route. She disclosed that, barely a month into the Order being issued, drivers were already experiencing challenges in implementing the measures introduced by the Ministry or Transport.
According to her, most of the challenges originated from passengers failing to abide by the measures, either intentionally or due to financial constraints.
“The problem is that at times the directives don’t mean anything to the commuters. While I usually tell my passengers to only sit on the designated seats, some of them refuse, claiming that they have come from the same place and hence want to sit together. Other times, a woman would come with – let’s say – four children, crying out to me that she doesn’t have money to pay for extra seats for the kids. In such cases, we have no option but to let them board.”
In Jennifer’s view, it is illogical to deny such a passenger with kids and strained finances from boarding. As a woman her priority is to ensure that mothers and their children are able to get home before dusk, when the curfew sets in.
“As a mother, I usually put myself in such situations. Sometimes we break the law knowingly to be human: this is a mother, with four kids and luggage, who doesn’t have extra money to pay for all seats. So what do Ido? Should I leave the kids behind because the mother can’t afford to pay for the extra seats?”
However, she affirmed that they don’t have any tolerance for refusal to wear face masks, which are mandatory for all passengers.
In the first few weeks following the Principal Secretary’s directive on the disinfection and sanitization of Nairobi’s public service vehicles before and after each journey, the measures were being adhered to, with most matatus being centrally disinfected at the railway’s bus terminus. However, according to David, a driver of a 14-seater Rongai matatu, this was not done in a coordinated manner. Moreover, every driver was expected to part with KSh50 in exchange for the service. David stated that drivers’ dwindling daily earnings soon made this unsustainable. He also noted that most operators had stopped disinfecting after realizing that the exercise was scaring passengers and creating stigma.
“Initially, some guys used to come to the terminus to disinfect our vehicles for a fee. We used to pay KSh 50 to have our vehicle sanitized every trip. This is very expensive now because we don’t have money, and besides, we are carrying less than normal capacity. When passengers see a matatu being disinfected, they fear boarding, thinking that the matatu has been infected with the virus. Once, when matatus were being disinfected, the passengers fled thinking there was a suspected coronavirus case. We got tired of this.”
KANERE also observed that interstage and short distance operators had largely abandoned sanitizing passengers as per the Ministry of Transport directive. Most of them were allowing passengers to hop on and off, deeming he Order inapplicable in reality. Nickson Mogaka is one operator plying the Town-South C route.
“In Nairobi we have interstage travelling short distances, some even 100m. It became difficult to sanitize passengers due to time factors, especially during rush hour. The curfew is kicking in yet we have not met the matatu owner’s target, let alone our wages. Where could we find the time to sanitize them? For us to meet the target we are forced to take the risk and ignore the COVID-19 guidelines. Again, passengers on this route board and alight in a rush. Someone boards and in the next 5 minutes they have alighted so sanitizing in this instance becomes difficult. For the past three weeks we have stopped sanitizing after it also became expensive for us.”
The implementation of generalized COVID-19 preventive measures in the public transport sector provoked mixed reactions from both operators and passengers due to the current economic situation. For instance, most public service vehicle owners depend on the daily earnings from their vehicles. From the proceeds, they pay their crew and keep money aside for maintenance. Drivers, on the other hand, have to make enough money to cater for fuel, traffic police officers who demand bribes on a daily basis as well as a terminus levy to the city council. According to David, hitting the daily target has become a mammoth challenge given that the number of daily commuters has reduced exponentially and the carrying capacity of the vehicles is reduced by almost half.
“That law oppresses us as we are not making anything from our hard work. Right now, we are only carrying 8 passengers out of the normal 14, making a total of KSh400 per trip. In the past we used to fuel between KSh 3000-3500 and in the evening the driver and I used to take home at least 1000. Now we are fueling for 1000 or 1500. We wake up at 4am and close at 9 pm, sometimes making less than KSh500 – and you have a family and are paying house rent.”
This pain and frustration is also evident among some of the passengers we interacted with. At Kencom stage, Patrick, who was commuting to Kawangware, blamed matatu operators for risking their lives while striving to make profits.
“The seating arrangements need to be changed or perhaps the extra seats removed. Right now, I don’t feel safe as a passenger because I know that when I board this matatu, another passenger will come and sit next to me. I blame the passengers because it is them that insist on getting into the vehicle even though it is full. If the government would stop giving directives and instead provide necessary inputs, safety measures in the transport sector would work.”
While COVID-19 preventive measures are still widely implemented in Nairobi’s public transport sector, the commuters hope fora lasting solution in this ongoing challenging context.