By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

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Uganda’s drive towards clean, zero emission public transport just got merrier, with the most unlikely entrant throwing his hat in the ring — Mr Matatu! And you guessed right: the power to turn the most obnoxious public transporter into a force of clean energy transformation had to come from the East – China!

It happened last week, when after half a century of verbally and physically abusing passengers, packing them like potatoes on seats infested with bedbugs and nails sticking out, our annoying 14-seater commuter taxis finally decided to make amends, by going electric.

They are starting by reducing passenger capacity to 10 per van supplied by Chinese automaker Dongfeng Automobile Company (DFAC).

The Chinese passenger vans, which Kampala Capital City Authority launched in partnership with Freedom Electric Vehicles (EVs) Ltd, can run up to 300 kilometres on a single charge. We’ll return to the mouthwatering economics of EVs versus fuel vehicles. First, the general environmental and health benefits.

Uganda is a country of some ten thousand 14-seater commuters imported at their end-of-life stage from elsewhere.

Read: BUWEMBO: If only Kampala bosses had paid heed to advice...

Besides their being inefficient in fuel consumption and requiring frequent oil change, our reckless drivers still go for used oil bought from service crew who service better maintained private cars and those belonging to serious organisations.

It means this double-used oil gets used fast, meaning that each of the 10k matatus disposes at least five litres of the stuff every month and goes for more. The 50k litres of toxic poison has to end up somewhere in the ground or in the waterbodies.

You can figure the resultant effect on the health of the inhabitants. To this add the exhaust fumes from the ill-serviced contraptions reputed to directly send 30k Ugandans to early graves per year, and their contribution to global warming and climate change.

Taxi drivers interviewed by the media expressed optimism at the economic prospect of operating the silent electric vans. While the initial purchase price in Kampala for the 10-seater of $31,500 is 50 percent higher than the $21,000 for the 14-seater petrol/ diesel van, the electric charge for the clean van costs just a sixth of the fuel for the 14 -seater for covering an equal distance.

However, the clean wonder vans cannot solve the congestion problem that leaves hundreds of thousands of Kampalans sitting idle for hours in traffic jam. The clean, soundless vans are set to worsen the traffic jam as it requires seven of them to carry the number of passengers carried by five of the 14-seaters.

But someone seems to have thought of everything. The day the Chinese vans were being launched, the country’s Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) plant at Jinja that has taken several years to build and equip was being thrown open for public inspection.

The visitors included a sovereign monarch, King Mswati III of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) who acknowledged Uganda’s technological advancement in the auto sector. The OEM plant is concentrating on manufacturing electric buses, including the 13-metre version for town service, with a 90-passenger capacity, meaning one unit can displace nine Chinese vans.

The government-owned OEM company has so far made about forty buses but though designed at Jinja and Kampala, these have been built in the army factory further upcountry, and it is only now that all work is set to be done at Jinja.

However, there is no competition between the Chinese imported vans and the Uganda-made electric buses. Instead, the two are a perfect match to fix the country’s road passenger transport as the buses do the mass transit in cities and towns and the vans handle the unscheduled inter-town routes.

The combination is bound to cut the congestion and reduce the dirty emissions, even more drastically as private car owners also start seeing the use of the clean EVs as saving money and time.

Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail:[email protected]