Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)
Austin Beyadi
8 February 2010
Dar Es Salaam — TRADERS at Makumbusho market in Kinondoni District, Dar es Salaam are reportedly threatening to abandon the market because of poor infrastructure.
It claimed that the Kinondoni municipal council has failed to renovate the bus stand into a permanent commuter bus terminal.
Traders are pushing for the development of the market to make it attractive to customers coming to buy goods from the petty traders operating from the area.
Speaking during the random interviews conducted by this paper over the weekend, traders at the market accused the municipal council of neglecting the terminal, the move that has resulted into commuters to interconnect buses from Mwenge instead of the designated Makumbusho.
Mr Abdallah Sadick who operates a second hand cloth shop at the idle terminal said buses were supposed to be dropping and picking up commuters plying the city routes at the terminal from all sides of the city but due to the pathetic condition at the terminal, buses prefer operating from Mwenge.
He said that the buses just pass at Makumbusho bus stand to drop and pick up passengers while they should have made the area their end destination.
"When the Mwenge Bus terminal was under renovation, all commuter buses were starting from here and we witnessed a sudden business growth - a lot of people opened businesses here but after the Mwenge terminal started operating all busses deserted Makumbusho to Mwenge, taking with them all the business opportunities," said Mr Sadick.
Another business person, Ms Joyce Kindekile said that there was need for the Surface and Marine Transport Regulatory Authority to enforce its directive that requires some buses to start and end their routes at Makumbusho to comply with the directive.
She said should the business continues in its current pace in the coming months, most of the businesses at Makumbusho Market will naturally close down, with high chances of doubling the number of criminals in the area.
A survey by the 'Daily News' discovered that most of the business items at the market were covered in dust, making them unattractive to passersby and potential buyers.
However, Salim Ally a commuter bus driver plying between the Makumbusho-Temeke routes said that he resorted to go all the way to Mwenge in search of passengers as there were no sufficient passengers at the Makumbusho terminal.
He said that when the bus is coming from Temeke, most of the passengers drop within Mwananyamala and for the sake of profit, the bus has to pick up passengers going to Mwenge.
If buses from Kunduchi, Tegeta, Ubungo and other areas were all dropping passengers at Makumbusho it could have been better because we would be assured of passengers but those buses from Tegeta and the other places drop passengers at Mwenge regardless of whether they are obliged to finish their routes at Makumbusho.
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