MOSES ORYEMA
Designation; Manager, OPIT Travelers
The year was 2007. I was fresh in public transport and buses were my first entry.
At the time, I had an uncle working with Oxfam, based in the UK. Oxfam did a research and found that most of the civil servants after service run a very difficult life, Oxfam came up with a strategy that enables its retired employees to invest their money. They carried out an awareness campaign and designed a program; when one clocked 50 years, you retired voluntarily, together with their attractive package such that after one’s service, they have where to resettle. My uncle driven by sheer determination and focus decided to retire and got his attractive package. With his retirement package at hand, a laser-focus and passion for public transport, he decided that buying a bus might be his yardstick contributor to ensuring safe and reliable public transport. But before that, he needed assurance that his ideas could work. He moved far and large in search of any information. He asked friends, family and strangers alike to no satisfaction. People’s bad and good experiences only derailed him further.
“Don’t buy a bus, a bus is like a woman, it will finish all your money, she’s yours but when she’s dead, you’ll bury in the compound”, advised those with bad experiences.
Some of us advised him to stop asking everyone since people clearly had different experiences.
“Go and look for a consultant, let someone do for you a feasibility study and write you a very good report, from there you’ll start and be a player among others who are also successful.”
That’s when he went to one of the consultants called Obalim- formerly in the Ministry of Finance, he wrote him a very good proposal that got him started in transport. That was the time when the government had some challenges in public transport after privatization. At that time, Mukwano had bought the former Uganda Transport Company (UTC) — People’s Bus. As was known, Mukwano’s interest was not to run public transport, he was after the land- where you see Mukwano Mall now- opposite Owino. Instead of running the buses, he sold them to Steel Rolling Mills. Where UTC had land, that’s where he started building.
It became an emergency. Government had nothing to do, it called upon the citizens who would be able to import vehicles/buses to come and invest. That was around 2003/2004. The government then left on the regulatory authority at the Ministry of Works and Transport-the Transport Licensing Board. In the earlier years, during Obote’s regime, the government had a contract of receiving only Tatas and these made very slow trips and would take very long to arrive at the destinations. A journey to Lira would take almost 15 hours. Kitgum could take the whole day, but when they gave a go ahead for people to get vehicles from outside, people who had money got very good vehicles, some of us actually bought Scanias from Sweden and took them for inspection, because government left the inspection of motor vehicles to the Licensing Board. We were also given the privilege of free tax as we never paid taxes apart from the PSV tax. If your vehicle is inspected, you are given one year to test it on the road, then you bring it back for inspection to see its road-worthiness. And that’s how we’ve been running.
We also formed an association of Allied Bus Owners Association. When we have any challenges, we sit together and present the issues to government. There was a time the infrastructure was not good; if we’re many on a certain board, we can go and lobby to government for road repairs such that it’s easy for us to access the other side of the district. Bus owners at that time were about 169 with more than 200 buses, so when they did a domestic survey to know how many people were travelling by bus, very few were going by air. Domestic business started being basically run by buses now. We even fixed prices. So it all started with a call by the government. A few buses that are run by Posta Uganda which is part of government parastatals were left to run. At the moment, they are running only 10 buses, and out of the 10 buses, 8 are moving on Kitgum road, meaning the 2 left are on Fort Portal and Kabale, just because they are being out-competed.
Current setbacks
However, we experience setbacks, you know buses are still being run in a very rudimentary way by some players- someone who does not have sound buses employs stouts who make a lot of noise. If you’re not very professional, they will come and sabotage your business. They go into price wars that bring your business down. I remember in 2007 when we were going to Kitgum, the price was fixed at Shs. 30,000 and Gulu, Shs. 25,000, after considering a number of factors such as the bad murram roads in Gulu and Kitgum. That time, the price for fuel was only Shs. 500, but now the price has risen to close to Shs. 4000, and passenger fare has remained the same.
The Tax issue
We are also fighting many taxes- the element of double taxation. We pay taxes to Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and find other local authorities coming to collect from us, like Kampala City Council Authority (KCCA) and then some other taxes along the districts. All those things bring setbacks, but how we manage it- that time we all cried and went complaining because Local Government was not listening to us.
We went straight to the president and tabled our complaints. KCCA was handling us differently from URA. We were being charged for users’ fee for entering Kampala, you pay Shs. 500,000 per bus per month. We said no, that is too much. They tried to reduce it to 150,000 per bus per month. We still refused because we have a very strong body. When such problems come about, we strike and throw down our tools. It would be imperative to blame government considering that it’s the biggest beneficiary to our service provision. Harmonizing the taxation policy on public transport to enable smooth operations of private players is in their best interest as much as public interest. It explains why the KCCA tax has been harmonized. The Way collection was stopped, now we are paying a lump sum. And then various districts can now share our one payment along the route where we go. Now, Luwero, Kampala, Gulu should not charge me independently.
I pay to Local Government, then through their decentralization process, the districts share this money among themselves. It has become cheaper. As of January 2020, a total of 2.8 million shillings per annum per bus was paid as tax to the government. This was a better option as compared to the previous Shs. 500,000 per bus per month and 200,000Ugx revenue to renew our licence. Also, we are now paying 1.5 million for PSV plus income tax of 20,000ugx per seat. If you have a bus capacity of 65-seater, that is around 1.3 per annum-PSV.
On why buses companies collapse as soon as they start operations.
Mr. Oryema believes that it’s in the lack of organization and clear Standard operating procedures(SOPs) on the part of bus owners. A bus is a very dynamic entity to manage requiring skill, patience and importantly financial discipline.
At the time of forming the Uganda Allied Bus Owners Association, it had become eminent that the Ugandan bus industry needed streamlined efforts and collective responsibility. With the foreseen challenges, the association elected an executive committee to foresee the day to day management. Certain measures were put in place to harmonize and also build a robust bus industry responsive to the daily adjustments in public transportation.
“When a new player comes, we hold a meeting and allocate free time where one can enter and play as well” says Mr. Oryema. “To help that person not to make losses, we also have the price policy now, where we fix a reasonable price and then there’s what we call the cue system. When I am loading, the others first close their doors and give you a time limit of usually one and a half hours. There is only one active bus operation, you go with your team and convince the passengers within that time and leave the space for the other buses. When I’m loading, the other ten buses close their doors and direct passengers to that bus which is loading at that time. After that bus has gone, they bring in another one so that people do not make losses. Even in that same association, when you get a problem, we sit down and try to iron out why you are getting this problem.” Narrates Mr. Oryema on explaining the benefits of the association.
The Management conundrum.
According to sources within the bus industry, its been found that every 1 in 10 bus owners misuse their money, take huge loans with unrealistic repayment plan and lack the necessary skills of bus management and growth. Such incompetence was most sighted in new young bus owners. One sources intimated to The Bus Man of a classic case where a new bus manager, heavily in debt still went ahead to use the daily proceeds from his new bus company to construct hostels. Another one failed to pay their loan, and the association could not stomach that shame. They got into the management of the bus company and realized that most of the employees were his children and they were very stubborn. The association put these children aside and it entered into the bus company’s office and started minting money out of their buses while clearing the loan. When that was finished, the buses were given back to the owner. It worked.
My favorite bus experience
“My 10 years of bus experienced were spent at a professionally managed bus company.* The director was very cooperative. He had retired from service with some good money that could kick-start a company. To start, he got himself a consultant with whom a feasibility study was done to assess the mechanisms to be used to enter the bus industry. He was advised not to put all his eggs in one basket, so we started with two(2) buses, he bought one cash and for the other, he got financial assistance from the bank.
We sought financial assistance from one commercial bank for one bus. Two buses started playing the role of servicing the loan of one bus. In less than a year, the loan was cleared. The bank wrote to us and commended us on our discipline and said they wished to give us more buses. They brought us 2 more buses. Every year we were buying 2. That meant we had 2 buses on loan and we were combining 4 buses to pay the loan of 2.
We started with the A-J series 2007. In 2008, we got the UAP series- 2 more buses. 2009, the bank gave us AAC series 2 more which made 6. So 6 were paying the loan of 2. We finished it in less than a year. The bank wrote again and said they were willing to add us buses. They gave us 2 more, that was the AU-series, to make 8. So now, 8 buses were combined to pay the loan for 2. We cleared and the bank again came and added us 2 buses to make 10. The owner was very honest. The loan account was also where he was banking the company’s money so that the bank can see what they can take and what to leave for him. So 10 buses were paying a loan for 2. The bank came and said, “No, this time we are giving you 4”. So we made 14 buses which were paying a loan for 4 buses. And that was the time when the human weakness came in.
The Human weakness
How frail the human heart must be — a mirrored pool of thought.
- Letters Home , Sylvia Plath
Humanity has for long struggled to contain the effects of the human weakness. Erich Fromm, a Jew that escaped the Nazi regime only to become one of the world’s renowned social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. His famous quote on the human weakness was that; Man’s biological weakness is the condition of human culture.
The human weakness never spared the owners of the said bus company. Armed with ambition and over-zealousness, the owner involved his inexperienced children in his business. This constrained decision making, made processes too complex and money mismanaged. Ideas on marginal costing were crippled, staff threatened and customers not well served. People started investing in secret businesses minus telling management. A war erupted, the old man fell sick and when they investigated his sickness, they found he had pressure so the doctor advised him to pull out of the business. Get somebody you trust to run the business and of course his option was the son. His situation was very complicated. He left the entire business into the hands of the son. That’s when people misadvised him and started creating his own business empire. He went for luxurious ventures.
At the time, we had even installed digital systems for booking at all the bus terminals. That time we formatted systems, we were using digital systems for booking in all the terminals. He diversified the business and since he thought he had all the money, he decided to do some other businesses. He went into telecom. Division came in. He preferred to bring in new players. In 2017, some of us could not bear, I decided to resign. I said, “No, I will not fight for a guinea fowl with the owner of the rope.” Its then that I joined the current company am building.
