Bus owners come up with new plan to boost business amid SGR impact

This comes after almost two months since the electric-powered train trips began on the Dar es Salaam-Morogoro section of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) line and 19 days since the Dodoma-Dar es Salaam route started.

Among the initiatives highlighted by the Taboa national secretary, Mr Joseph Prisicus, include relocating their [bus owners’] capitals to other destinations or unutilised sectors.

Mr Prisicus told The Citizen that the association was also asking its members to write to the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) to seek assistance in the area of taxes.

This, he said, was because it was an open secret that those who depended purely on the Dar es Salaam-Morogoro-Dodoma route would anticipate difficulties in meeting the initial tax estimates as the number of bus trips has been reduced.

“Dar es Salaam-Morogoro-Mwanza is the main line with more bus connections than any other region. At least 100 buses make trips on the route each day,” he said, noting that the immediate plan was to reduce the level of investment on that route and relocate the buses to other areas of transportation and sectors that are yet utilised.

He said given the impact of the SGR, bus owners can only support the development even as they look up other options.

“The railway transport offers many benefits. As such, if passengers end up in Dodoma, there are buses that will take them to other destinations. Since we are all taxpayers, the government should look at how to help owners so there is a win-win situation in the process,” he said.

Taboa, he said, was still conducting an evaluation on the actual impact of the SGR on bus owners’ operations. The actual impact regarding the various areas of employment and investors’ capital will be known after six months.

He said what is known so far is that a company that previously made 20 trips a day from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro has now reduced its trips to between nine and ten per day. The reduction means they will struggle to pay the estimated taxes due to the decrease in the number of vehicles.

At the moment, some drivers have been staying at home without much work to do, and bus owners were thus compelled to provide them with money to live on.

The drivers, he said, have been asking for work elsewhere. “Our advice to members is that they work efficiently so that they can be competitive in the market. We believe there will be railway passengers, and there will also be bus passengers. The only difference is that the profit of buses will be smaller than what it used to be,” he said.

Earlier this month, a presentative for Shabiby Bus Company, Mr Edward Magawa, said they were currently working on a way to their business by looking at other destinations instead of relying heavily on the Dar es Salaam-Dodoma route.

Mr Magawa asked the government to establish bus stations near SGR stations so that it could be easy for passengers to connect or access buses and continue with their journeys.

However, the Land Transport Regulatory Authority (Latra) director of road transport at Latra, Mr Johansen Kahatano, admitted that the bus business has drastically gone down.

He said two weeks before the commencement of electric-powered train services, they conducted a survey for the Dar es Salaam-Morogoro route.

The survey centred on the total frequency of buses tracked through the Vehicle Tracking System (VTS).

“We realised that a bus that used to start from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro and then returns from Morogoro to Dar es Salaam and once again goes back to Morogoro from Dar es Salaam (three trips) has reduced the trips to only two (Dar es Salaam-Morogoro and back to Dar es Salaam only),” he said.

A Super Baraka Bus agent at the Magufili Bus Terminal, Ms Zawadi Chusi, said it has become very difficult for her to find passengers travelling between Dar es Salaam and Tabora.

It is, however, an open secret that buses will always remain vital to some of the passengers because not everyone from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma travels via the train.