•Rowdy characters prowl the Inter-City Bus Terminus pretending to be trevellers.

By MICHELO HIMAAMBO –
BEING pestered by callous call boys has become an everyday affair for travelers passing through the gates of the Inter-City Bus Terminus in Lusaka.
Even before one gets close to the bus station, an annoying welcoming party of rowdy youths working for different bus companies emerge, with each youth intending to make one board a preferred bus while others try to get one to board their bus too.
The fighting over the customer heats up as some try to grab the traveler’s luggage to take to their preferred buses so that the traveler is forced to follow and ultimately made to buy a ticket for that particular bus.
The youth fight over travelers because for each traveler they convince to board a particular bus, they get a small commission.
But their rowdy behaviour often unsettles the travelling public who, in some cases, end up losing valuables because some of the youths who pretend to be call boys working with certain bus operators are actually thieves in disguise.
Complaints from members of the public range from being sold fake bus tickets by fraudsters, being denied refunds in case of delays, being subjected to disclaimers over goods which are said to be carried at owner’s risk, and bus company refusing to take responsibility in case of any eventualities.
On top of that, some of the rowdy characters prowling the Inter-City Bus Terminus  pretend to be travelers by occupying bus seats to mislead the traveling public into buying tickets for a particular bust thinking it is almost full when in fact not.
All these activities seem to go on right under the noses of police officers who have a police post right inside the station.
The police seem to have failed to enforce law and order for the traveling public.
The station lacks order and there appears to be no regulation by the station managers over what goes on there.
Some of the bus conductors talked to said although their actions could be described as harassment, forcing travelers by misleading them or making them buy tickets by hook or crook was a way of making their buses fill up faster as they are employed to convince people to use buses of particular bus operators they worked for.
“I make a living through this job of bringing travelers to the bus that I work for and the higher the number of people I bring the higher the amount of money I will get at the end of the day,” said one man at the station.
He said the station is full of different buses that go to various places and if a conductor sits and waits for people to follow them to their ticket shops, it would mean staying the whole day without making any progress.
“I don’t see this to be a problem because I know that I even help people with their heavy bags from as far as Kamwala shopping centre,” he said.
“I have a family of five and I feed my family through this job and once I am promoted at this station I will be able to rent a reasonable house for my family,” he said.
He said he did not see any form of harassment in the way he carried out his job as he thought that he did people a favour by helping them carry their bags in most instances.
Another conductor said he had worked at the Inter-City Bus Terminus for a number of years and  so nothing wrong with what he was doing.
The police command says it will now position officers  at Intercity Bus Terminus and other bus stations to deal with rowdy operators and their agents who were  harassing travelers.
Inspector General of Police Kakoma Kanganja said the police had received complaints of people being harassed at bus stations, especially at Inter-City Bus Terminus and measures had since been put in place to deal with perpetrators regardless of status.
“We have taken note of the reports by innocent citizens who are being harassed in bus stations and I am warning those that are in this habit to stop it or they will face the law. We shall deal with them regardless of status,” he said.
Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) Director Brian Lingela said the commission had equally received complaints from the bus terminus on a daily basis and a number of bus operators had been fined but the trend had persisted.
He said the CCPC was working with the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA), the police, ministry of Transport and Communications and the Lusaka City Council (LCC) – who are the custodians of the bus terminus – to ensure sanity and protection of travelers was restored.
Mr Lingela called on the traveling public to assist the commission in dealing with vice and cases of crime by making formal complaints.
He appealed to the traveling public not to buy tickets anyhow but do so from designated booths because it was difficult to handle cases and complaints without evidence.
“CCPC is going to start a campaign of distributing brochures in the bus terminus to enlighten travelers on their rights,” he said.
There is need to focus on the causes of disorder at Inter-City Bus Terminus in order to rid the station of criminal elements and safeguard the lives and property of the traveling public.