From Che Bruno Azenyui in
Buea
A new
association to protect the interest of commercial motorbike riders in the Buea
municipality will soon see the light of day. This was the outcome of a meeting on
Friday October 9, between representatives of bike riders and council officials
that held at the council premises in Buea. Chaired by the first deputy mayor, Mbome
Motomby Emmanuel, the meeting came following a scuffle between the bike riders
and council officials that resulted in the arrest and detention of seven bike
riders on October 1.
According
to Motomby, the objective of the meeting was to lay the ground rules for the
creation of a bike riders’ association in the municipality.
“Your
riders’ association should be as strong as the taxi drivers’ association. You
have been operating in dispersed ranks. So what you need to do now is to be
under an umbrella association, then order is going to reign in Buea. Those who
will be below the age of twenty, as we have agreed upon here, if caught with a
bike in this municipality, the bike will be impounded. Those in the age
group of below twenty don’t have respect for anybody. So as bike riders, please
start working before the municipality comes in. Send away these teenagers;
encourage them to go back to school. Bike riders should be more responsible because
there are so many irresponsible bike riders in Buea. If you do these, we are
going to prescribe a uniform for bike riders” the deputy mayor elaborated.
The
council also agreed to foot up to 50% of the bills for the production of badges
for authorized bike riders in the municipality. Some of the concerns often
raised by riders in the Buea municipality include the poor state of farm-to-market
roads they have been asked to ply and harassment of bike riders by the council’s
municipal police.
Responding
to the above concern, the deputy mayor said the municipal police is made up of
very responsible young men who are just doing their job. The riders were
equally proscribed from working on days reserved for the famous ‘keep Buea
clean’
As
concerns the measures the council is putting in place to ensure sanity within
the bike riding sector, the deputy mayor said: “Here in Buea we have specification
as to where bikes should be found. The bikes we find around Muea should not be
there. They should be somewhere around the entrance to Lysoka. We don’t want to
see bike riders in the urban periphery. Bikes should ply farm-to-market roads,
not the urban periphery.”
Pastor
Jonas Bissinge reacting on behalf of the bike riders described the move as a
solution to the problems of bike riders in Buea. “I noticed a lot of disorder
because some people carry about two or three passengers and run on this rough road
which is so small and risky. We came here so that we resolve things together
and agree on one point we have discussed with the mayor and our limits have
been given to us and we are going to respect that.”
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