|
|
Mozambique: TPM Needs Over 100 New Buses
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
4 February 2008
Posted to the web 4 February 2008
Maputo
Maputo's publicly owned bus company, TPM, says it need between 100 and 150 operational buses in order to ensure a permanent presence on all the routes that it should operate in the Mozambican capital and the neighbouring city of Matola.
But in fact, according to TPM spokesperson Boaventura Lipangue, the company only has an average of 40 operational buses on any particular day. The company owns 93 buses - but most of them are off the roads due to breakdowns or shortages of spare parts.
If TPM had more buses, that would go a long way towards solving the financial problems of citizens currently obliged to spend a substantial part of their meagre wages on the fares charged by the private owned mini-buses (colloquially known as "chapas") that supply much of the city's passenger transport.
As from Tuesday, chapa fares rise - from five to 7.5 meticais for distances of up to five kilometres, and from 7.5 to ten meticais for longer distances. (At current exchange rates, there are about 24 meticais to the US dollar).
TPM fares are much cheaper. The flat rate fare within Maputo and Matola is five meticais. Journeys on TPM buses beyond the city boundaries to Boane or Marracuene districts cost 10 meticais.
Lipangue told AIM that a study undertaken by TPM concluded that the company needs between 100 to 150 new buses to do its job properly. "Everything depends on the government's reply", he said. "Currently it's just a dream".
But while it awaits a response to the study from the Transport Ministry, TPM plans to purchase five new buses by the end of April, in an investment estimated at 13 million meticais.
These will join a further 11 buses, nine of them luxury coaches, that TPM recently acquired.
The company used to run at a heavy loss. Daily revenue was about 160,000 meticais, 90 per cent of which was spent on fuel, leaving precious little for wages, maintenance, lubricants and spare parts.
TPM's situation began to improve in 2007 with the introduction of buses running on natural gas (cheaper than diesel or petrol), the opening of new routes, the hiring out of buses, and better management.
"In the first month after introducing the special service to hire out buses, we had fabulous earnings", claimed Lipangue.
He also thought the experiment with buses running on natural gas was positive, even though one of the Chinese manufactured "Yutong" buses caught fire when it was being resupplied. Nonetheless the five new TPM buses will run on gas.
The destruction of the bus was caused by the company that supplied the vehicles, Tecnica Industrial, which, according to Lipangue, will have to pay for its negligence by replacing the vehicles.
|
TPM's situation also improved with the introduction of the routes to Boane and Marracuene. On these routes, the buses are always full, in both directions.
TPM also wants to cut its staff by introducing one man operated buses on more routes, thus abolishing the job of ticket collector. The ticket collectors are unloved figures: until recently the fare was 4.5 meticais, but the ticket collectors usually told passengers paying with a five metical coin that they had no change, and so pocketed the extra 50 centavos.
TPM is convinced that much of the fares paid by the passengers ended up in the ticket collectors' pockets. However the new system mean that the drivers are responsible for collecting the fares as well as driving the buses, a dual responsibility they object to, and which slows the buses down.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
