Pioneer Bus to employ 1000

By Brian Mayanja

PIONEER Easy Bus is looking for about 1,000 people for different jobs next month.

Esther Kemigisha, the company legal officer, said the company is in high gear to resume business after Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) cleared the last hurdle for them to resume operations in the city. 

“We shall recruit the same number of people we had before,” Kemigisha said.

Among the workers the bus company will recruit are mainly drivers and technical staff. Before Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) impounded the buses, it had recruited 500 drivers to drive 100 buses. 

Others are IT experts, accountants, administrators, supervisors and technicians.

The bus company has also started testing the mechanical condition of the buses, which have been parked at Mandela National Stadium for long.

“We do not yet know the amount of money we need to become fully operational,” Kemigisha explained.

“We shall know after all the checks have been duly completed.”

On transport fares, Pioneer Easy Bus plans to slightly increase the transport fares. Apart from Kampala city, the new signed contract allows Pioneer buses to operate in Mukono and Wakiso districts.

For almost one year the owners of the bus company and KCCA officers have been negotiating the new contract.

“They have been negotiating with KCCA and other Government agencies like URA, trying to sort out some small issues,” said Robert Kalumba, KCCA’s deputy spokesperson.

However, KCCA insisted that Pioneer Easy Bus will not be the only transport operator in the city.

During the meetings with Government agencies, the bus owners promised to import more 100 buses by October next year.

KCCA executive director Jennifer Musisi told the press in her Christmas message that all the issues with Pioneer Bus had been discussed to completion. 

However, Kemigisha said they had not finalised the issue of monthly remittances to KCCA.

She said a new regulation on public transport is soon coming out, adding that it will determine how much bus companies will pay to the Government. 

Pioneer bus company was paying KCCA sh300,000 per bus in 2012.

Negotiations to have the buses operate again have delayed for almost two years because both parties were embroiled in legal issues. 

At one point, Kemigisha told Saturday Vision that KCCA officers were to blame for delaying to sign the contract and threatened that the bus company was planning to use other avenues to get justice.

Sources at City Hall, however, said the bus company later asked the Prime Minister, Ruhakana Rugunda, to intervene. 

Rugunda convened a meeting at his office, where both parties were invited.

Last year, President Yoweri Museveni told URA to allow Pioneer buses to return on the road. By the time URA impounded the buses, the company had a debt of over sh8.5b arising from unpaid taxes.

Museveni recommended that the company be allowed to pay the tax arrears in instalments.