Travellers stranded as bus operators hike charges

Several people including students remain stranded at different parks in Kampala as they rush to the villages to beat the Wednesday deadline when vehicles will not be allowed to move from one district to another.

President Museveni, while addressing the country on Sunday, gave public transport until June 10 before the suspension of inter-district movements takes effect.

Students together with other people have since Monday morning flocked different bus parks to leave the city before the deadline.

Some of these are however stranded, pondering on the next move as they claim that transport fares have been hiked.

At the Global bus terminal park for example, transport fares to the Western region was increased from Shs 40, 000 to Shs 60,000 on Monday while those heading to Masaka were being charged Shs 30,000 up from the usual Shs 15,000.

By Tuesday, a bus ticket to Ibanda was going for Shs 150,000 while that to Nebbi was at Shs 100,000.

A ticket to Gulu is now at Shs 120,000 according to tickets seen by this website.

People who could not afford the new charges were seen stranded with their luggage.

Management at the park has been forced to weigh in, and ask travellers to line up as the demand for buses exceeds the supply.

The situation was not any different at the Namayiba bus park as travellers were concerned about th sudden increase in the transport fares.

Some of the travellers who spoke to NBS Televesion however noted that they had no option but to pay, since they cannot survive in Kampala for the 42 days of lockdown as announced by the president.

“It is really not fair but we have to go, because now we do not even know if they will open up after the 42 days. That is how it started last year and before we knew it, they extended again,” one of the travellers said.

Christine Namaganda, the operations manager of Golden buses at Namayiba said that they are also worried that the people who are travelling to the villages might lead to new COVID-19 infections in the villages.

Namaganda asked government to extend the June 10 deadline to give people more time so that they do not crowd the bus parks which puts their lives and those of the families they are travelling to at risk of being infected.