Kampala Capital City Authority—KCCA officials have engaged the top executive of the Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers Association in an administrative meeting on handling drivers in the city.
The four-hour-meeting chaired by Jennifer Ssemakula Musisi, the KCCA executive director, took place at City Hall and it centered on park management issues regarding drivers’ behavior, passengers’ rights and taxi operation routes.
It comes just days after a bitter court battle ended with UTODA being kicked out of city park management.
Starting this February, KCCA took over the management of the taxi business in the city but Charles Kamya, the UTODA spokesperson says the meeting was inevitable.
Kamya told URN that this is the best starting point for the two groups to start making headway in restoring their relations.
He says this was the first meeting adding that it proved that the two parties can work together again.
Peter Kaujju, the KCCA spokesperson says the meeting has been called to discuss administrative matters of drivers in the course of their work. Kaujju declined to give more details.
In another separate meeting, Erias Lukwago, the Kampala Lord Mayor held a meeting with over 500 drivers at St Matia Mulumba in Old Kampala and directed them to reject the new KCCA rates till the figures have been agreed on by a resolution of the authority meeting.
Speaking to reporters on Monday shortly after the meeting, Lukwago said forcing the drivers to continue paying what UTODA has been charging them would mean continuing with an illegality.
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Henry Charles Ssentongo, the chairperson of the newly created National Drivers Welfare Association said this is the time for KCCA to focus on reorganizing leadership at the city taxi stages. He argued that this would in turn help KCCA workers in their daily operations.
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Ssentongo asked KCCA to reduce on the new rates saying preliminary findings indicate that there is a total of 20,000 operating taxis in the city which would earn KCCA a total of one billion shillings per month if 50,000 shillings is paid by each taxi.
On Friday, Musisi reduced the rates from 155,000 shillings to 120,000 per month.
