On a normal day, a person travelling to Masaka pays 25,000/= and one going to Malaba pays 30,000/=. However, since the 21st of this month, transport fares of both destinations and many others have doubled and others trippled and by the end of today, Kampala to Masaka is 50,000/= and Kampala to Malaba is 60,000/= respectively!
These huge transport costs have left many city dwellers who were excited to hit their villages stranded stranded in these bus and taxi parks with their luggage while some had to fight for a spot in the buses whose charges seemed a little lower.
Many of the bus and taxi operators attributed the hiking of trasport charges to the costly fuel prices who have since the beginning of the month been increasing. It is hard to convince the transport operators not to increase the fares when the price for fuel keeps increasing every other day,” said Nelson Ssekandi, manager of Namayiba bus terminal
While the transport fares have shot to the sky, the number of travellers going to the villages has been low compared to 2-3 years back and this according to some observors is because of the Covid-19 pandemic that forced many people to shift permanently to the villages.
The issue of schools re-opening in the second week of January next year has been raised as one of the reasons why few people have gone to the villages as many are cutting on the expenditure to prepare for the re-openning of schools.Have you travelled to the village or you're an "urban rat?"
