Kalita is a Concorde, not a bus!

SIR — For sometime I have noticed a very worrying trend with the Kalita Bus Service which plies the Fort Portal-Kampala highway. We cannot keep talking of accidents when most of the time the tragedies that befall us are man-made and could easily be avoided. I request the proprietors of Kalita to read this, and read it carefully. The drivers of Kalita buses seem to take great pride in driving at abnormally high speeds. To make it worse, they are egged on by traders who want to pick merchandise and be back in Fort Portal before dusk. On Friday, I travelled on a Kalita bus and did not like the experience. To call that vehicle a bus would be an understatement. It is a Concorde but the only difference is that it travels on the ground. The tension of travelling at such a speed is unbearable. What do the drivers of Kalita buses have in mind? However experienced a driver may be, it is disastrous to travel at such a speed because in the event of a problem on the vehicle or on the road there would simply be no reaction time. Why should Kalita drivers hold the lives of passengers in their hands? There are many traffic officers in Kampala harassing drivers over insignificant traffic offences with the express purpose of extorting money from them and ignoring the deadly behaviour of the Kalita driverss. Why do Kalita drivers put such a low value on their passengers’ lives? At one time I got so alarmed as we ‘flew’ towards Mubende and walked over to see what speed we were travelling at. Sure enough, the speedometer had been tampered with and was stuck at zero although we were ‘flying’. This is meant to dupe passengers! I returned to Kampala on Sunday on the mid-day service. The driver was different but the behaviour was the same. In spite of the nasty stretch between Kyenjojo and Kyegegwa and from Mityana to Kampala, including several stops to pick passengers and to eat at Mubende, the journey from Fort Portal to kampala was done in four hours flat! As we cruised past Zigoti, we came face to face with logs from a lorry which had broken down. The logs had covered part of the road.
The way the driver braked, says a lot about what can befall passengers on a vehicle travelling at the speed we were. This is criminal behaviour and must be stopped. The head of traffic Police, if there is one, should take a very serious view of this matter. How about disguising himself and travelling on a Kalita bus? Many times, drivers escape unscathed while passengers die in large numbers because of the drivers’ criminal behaviour.

James Atugonza
Kampala