New Malindi Bus Park in Limbo Over Management
By Linda Maina
Email, thecoastnewspaper@gmail.com
Owners of eleven-seater shuttle matatus operating at the New Malindi Bus Park have protested a move by the Malindi Municipality to control business there.
The owners claim they are operating at losses as they are not allowed to compete fairly.
They allege the municipality leadership has turned the bus park into a market after allocating stalls meant for transport operations to shops and green grocers.
This has denied the matatu savings and credit cooperatives (saccos) adequate space to operate without interference.
Mohamed Badawy, the director of Munawar Shuttle Sacco, told journalists on September 26, 2024 that the municipal authorities were forcing the 27 saccos to operate from the podiums of only three stalls leased by Munawar, 001 and Al-Wahim matatu saccos.
According to him the authorities are also forcing the saccos to load passengers consecutively instead of allowing passengers to choose the sacco of their choice causing many a sacco vehicles to stay idle foe a long period of time.
“This means that if Munawar loads passengers into its matatu in the morning, as it always does, it has to wait for the other 26 saccos to load passengers before another Munawar vehicle can do so, and this takes a whole day.”
The director said his vehicles had been clumped after he refused to follow the new bus park management formulae calling on Governor Gideon Mung’aro to intervene.
He accused a senior county government official of colluding with one businessman who owns vehicles registered in eight matatu saccos to frustrate those with matatus in only one Sacco.
Most of such vehicles have remained idle as eight of those belonging to the businessman always getting the advantage of ferrying passengers out of the park.
He said the formulae of saccos waiting for each other on a 1:1:1 basis was introduced by the county government in 2017 when there were only three saccos operating shuttle matatus at the park.
His sentiments were echoed by Sagaaf Shariff Abdulrahman and Jamal Ali Omar, who own matatus operating under Munawar Sacco and Baraka Maganga, the leader of matatu touts at the bus park, said the new formulae had led to great losses to them as they were unable to operate freely.
When journalists visited the bus stage, they found three matatus belonging to Munawar Shuttles clumped and about five county askaris keeping watch from a distance.
Efforts to get a comment from the Malindi Municipal Manager, Eng. Johnson Mwabati and the Malindi acting Subcounty administrator Dadu Chome, were fruitless as the former said he was on leave while the latter did not respond to phone calls.
