From as early as 7.30 am, commuters had to endure hours of waiting as transport operators were at loggerheads with traffic police inside the Mbabane Bus Rank.
Mbabane – Commuters destined for Manzini and other places along the Manzini-Mbabane corridor were in for a shock at the Mbabane Bus Rank as public transport came to a standstill for more than three hours.
From as early as 7.30 am, commuters had to endure hours of waiting as transport operators were at loggerheads with traffic police inside the Mbabane Bus Rank.
The bone of contention was that Mbabane traffic police are only targeting the Manzini-Mbabane transport operators when ensuring that no public transport operates at an unauthorised area.
Unauthorised in this context means randomly loading customers at a zone that is not meant for that.
For example, the Manzini-Mbabane public transport operators usually target customers outside of the bus rank and their usual spot is at the traffic lights situated closer to Chumana Cellular Store and along the road leading up to the traffic lights near the Mbabane Government Hospital.
The argument from the Mbabane-Manzini transport operators was that police are biased in apprehending those found to be on the wrong as other transport operators are getting away with it. These are those servicing routes like Mahlanya, Luyengo, Bhunya and the buses using the Mbabane-Manzini route.
When interviewed on the commotion that saw hundreds of commuters opting for other means like hitchhiking to get to their destinations, one transport operator said the traffic police have been taking their members straight to custody without even affording them the opportunity to pay a fine through issuing of a traffic offence ticket and this was only done to the Mbabane-Manzini transport operators.
“We have had it up to the neck with the biasness of the traffic police and today we took a stand to halt transport operations so that the issue is sorted once and for all. Other transport operators are doing the same thing but we are the only ones that are victimised and we can’t let that continue,” he said.
At first, it was two traffic police officers who were involved in an argument with the transport operators inside the Mbabane Bus Rank but the commotion between the two parties escalated to a point that other police officers were called to the scene and most of them were monitoring the situation while stationed at the Eswatini Plaza entrance near Building Society.
Worth mentioning is that other transport operators, particularly those servicing the Pigg’s Peak route, were affected by the commotion as they could not exit the rank due to the manner in which the Manzini-Mbabane transport operators parked their taxi’s. They literally blocked the road.
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