Stakeholders worry over PM’s decree regulating the motor-bike taxi sector in Cameroon

Take a visit to any general hospital. You will be shocked at the number of wards occupied by patients suffering from motorbike accident injuries. From one early 2007 account a good one quarter of the patients of the Yaounde Central Hospital were sent there by ‘okadas.’ Also there appear to be more people dying nowadays from okada than from car accidents.

Yet all that notwithstanding the motorbike taxi is rendering a much needed service to the public. It is available everywhere, including the most enclaved villages inaccessible to motor vehicles.
For township dwellers, okada, as the taxi bikes are called in Anglophone towns, is also flexible. It takes you to your front door where taxi-cabs are usually reluctant to get to. It is cheap: 100 fcfa for most journeys.

For okada operators themselves the cheap Chinese bikes have become a source of living and hope for a whole generation of young unemployed Cameroonians who would otherwise be small-time thieves or highway robbers. From their daily work they are now able to house, clothe and feed their families as well as send their children to school. Okada has indeed changed lives!

For a people rendered poor and miserable by their government, okada is a welcome gift, both for the operator and for the passenger. That is why when you consider the valuable service it renders one can only try to minimise the down side to this powerful new transportation phenomenon.
That is exactly what Ephraim Inoni’s year-end decree sought to do – introduce some usage and operational regulations to the new phenomenon. On the face of it, the requirements appear quite in order and the six months’ grace period appears also fair enough.

Trouble is all change is difficult and tends to be resisted. The star building seems to have ignored this. Considering the changes and grace period granted to be fair deal, they went straight ahead with their decree. That has provoked resistance where a little public relations management should have facilitated compliance. Now it appears that Inoni did a bad job.

The decree demands that okada operators be at least 18 years old; wear a helmet for themselves and only one passenger; have insurance cover; paint bike tank in yellow which is the taxicab colour in Cameroon.
The decree also requires operators to wear recognisable jackets; pay an assortment of taxes. Operators must also have a category A drivers’ licence.
All the requirements must be complied within the next six months latest.

Admittedly there are a few things to talk about between representatives of okada operators and government representatives. For instance why shouldn’t there be a bike-riding licence instead of obliging operators to obtain a category A car driving licence?
Also it seems that present bikes can be safely adapted to take two passengers (and no more). Once the need is expressed, we are sure that the Chinese manufacturers will soon design bikes with seats for two passengers. The ban should be for more than two.

Considering the transportation service rendered by okada and the unemployment reduction that it represents which in turn gives hope to thousands of amilies we think it would be counter-productive to bring a heavy tax burden on these struggling operators with razor thin business margines. Insurance and taxes must necessarily be kept to a minimum, a token.

By and large the new measures should be aimed at increasing safety, authorising and registering operators and promoting the activity, particularly in rural areas. Okada should on no account be discouraged by ill-thought out policies.
There is also need for dialogue, even at that level. Government should not ignore them or underestimate what problems they could cause. We are only less than a year away from the 2008 uprising that began with public officials underestimating the damage taxicab drivers could cause.
Ephraim Inoni should beware okadas are determined to hit him!