By RABECCA CHIPANTA –
THE Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) has slapped a three-month Road Service Licence (RSL) suspension on the owner of the bus that was involved in a road traffic accident in which 25 people died in Kabwe for operating outside the designated locality.
The agency has also given Wada Chovu Transport a seven-day ultimatum to show cause why its RSL should not be revoked.
RTSA senior public relations manager Frederick Mubanga said the agency was concerned with Aubrey M’membe’s poor road safety record, whose records revealed that two of his buses had been involved in accidents on April 30, 2013 and April 9, 2016.
Mr Mubanga said RTSA chief executive officer Zindaba Soko had written to the bus owners, stating that subsection (16) of section 108 of the Road Traffic Act empowers the Director of the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) to either suspend or revoke its RSL if the conditions subject to which it was granted were not being complied with.
Mr Soko said the agency had a responsibility of ensuring the safety of all road users and would in this regard not hesitate to invoke its powers under section 108 of the Act either to suspend or to revoke the RSL of any operator that had a bad road safety record.
Mr Mubanga said the agency had given both Mr M’membe and Wada Chovu a seven-day ultimatum to show cause why their RSLs should not be revoked or suspended for failure to comply with the conditions subject to which it was granted.
He said failure to do so within the prescribed period would leave the agency with no option but to suspend or revoke the RSLs.
Mr Mubanga said preliminary investigations revealed that both drivers were driving at excessive speed and therefore failed to prevent the accident from happening.
“The driver of the Wada Chovu bus failed to keep to his lane as he was trying to avoid a stationary truck which was completely off the road and eventually resulted in head-on collision with the other bus,” he said.
On Saturday a Wada Chovu bus, registration number AJB 6340, was involved in a traffic accident after colliding with a Mercedez Benz bus, registration number ACZ 4829, leaving 25 people dead and several others injured.