Assist bodaboda operators to reduce youth unemployment

By Editor

Editorial Cartoon

Introduction of motor cycle taxis in Tanzania several years ago has been both a blessing and a liability. These taxis, commonly called boda boda (because they were originally used to ferry passengers across Ugandan/Kenyan borders) can be found all over this country’s rural and urban areas.

 

Yet most are owned by people who hire young men to drive for a negotiated fee on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. This mode of transport has helped to solve youth unemployment in the country, and the CRDB Bank has seized the opportunity by both giving them a hand and making business at the same time.

 

We are told that the bank has offered 20 motorcycles to the Union of Motorcycle Owners  and Operators (UWABOM) in Mbeya Region to ensure that more young people become employed. This is good because it means that society members would be able to purchase more bodabodas to add to their present fleets.

 

In turn this would help them hire more young men to operate their fleets. On the other hand, the bank would get more customers to borrow money from it. Lest we forget, banks are in the business of making money, and lending it to clients is one of the ways.

 

However, the most important aspect of this process is reducing  youth unemployment. For at this time when there are thousands of primary, secondary and high schools, the number of young people completing education every year runs into millions.

 

If these are left with no opportunity to  make  a living and fend for themselves, then the country will be making a time bomb. Something must be done, and done quickly, to prevent this time bomb from exploding. 

One way of doing so is to help young men and women so that they have something to do, like operating boda boda transport business.

 

However, the business has in a way caused several problems, such as the increased number of traffic accidents involving them. The reason for this is partly that some of the bodaboda drivers do not own driving licences.

These learn driving for one or two days only and off they go, getting the expertise as the days go by. This is why it is not strange to find a bodaboda driver zooming past red traffic lights when he should have waited for the green light, as traffic laws require.

 

What they do is both wrong and dangerous to their lives and that of other road users, be they pedestrians or motorists. It is alarming when they break traffic laws  before the very eyes of traffic police officers who seem to be toothless when it comes to controlling operations of boda boda riders. Concrete steps should therefore be taken to control operations of boda bodas and save the nation from the many accidents they cause.

 

All in all, the move by the CRDB Bank to assist boda boda operators is commendable. This is because it is among efforts to reduce unemployment among the army of young men now loitering and littering the streets of most urban areas in Tanzania. It should be emulated by other banks and financial institutions in the country.