Privatization by other means: How the Public Transport sector was "murdered"

The government has played a dirty game in order to decimate the public transport service over the past decade.
The regime has made its desire to privatize the transport sector (railways and buses) no secret more than once. However, it was never an easy job. Such attempts were met with fierce opposition by the workers, and each time the transportation minister made statements about potential privatization schemes, threats of strikes loomed.
In the railways, the govt strategy rested on privatizing the “services,” like bringing a private company to run the catering on sleeping trains, instead of selling the sector already troubled with industrial actions that could explode even stronger.
In the public transportation sector, the govt resorted to what I describe as nothing short of murder.
The government has started to cut down the supply of spare parts to the old buses around five years ago. I don’t have any figures yet. But every striker in El-Mostaqbal Garage I interviewed repeated the same accusation: No spare parts are given to us starting from five years ago. The workers said they were instructed to take whatever parts they needed from older buses.
This meant the number of operating buses on every route line started dwindling, with buses going obsolete and rusting out day by day. No need to mention the implications that have had on the safety of the drivers and the passengers. Grab a local newspaper any day and bus crashes due to mechanical failures are almost a daily news item.
These are not accidents. These are cases of the state murdering its own poor citizens. Who gives a shit about those whose incomes can only afford them a ride in these public buses anyways?
And then the government opens the door for private companies to step in and operate their buses, with a higher ticket fee, on the same routes taken by the public transport buses. So if no public transport buses are available because they are literally dying, the citizen will have no choice but to hop onto the new private mini-buses or the micro-buses. Such private companies made sure their buses operated during the two day strike. I spotted on my way from Nasr City to downtown Cairo on the second day of the strike few of them in Abbassiya and Ramses, that belonged to Lebanon and El-Badr Companies.
So as you can see, the plan was simple. Kill old buses by not providing spare parts. Let private companies buses operate their vehicles on the same routes. The end result: privatization by other means.

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1. 3arabawy BookMarx 08/22/2009 (p.m.) at 3arabawy

   August 22, 2009 - 11:30 PM

   [...] Privatization by other means: How the Public Transport sector was “murdered” at 3arabawy [...]

2. acairene

   August 24, 2009 - 4:15 PM

   This whole privatization of public transport issue is just one of the many huge public issues that a properly-run country should have in the open.

   I would love to see more thorough documentation of this. Perhaps a timeline of policies and the encroachment of private sector.. Maybe a compilation of accidents from mechanical failures.. Figures on # of buses/ capacity of bus lines/bus system over time would be great. I’m sure this is all hard to come by, but i suppose something could be pieced together based on testimonials from this and other garages as well as connecting the dots with what’s in the papers.

   We all know we’re being fucked.. but it’s nice to have statistics on just how fucked.

3. Bart

   August 30, 2009 - 10:25 PM

   Do you have any real documentation of this? Talking to a few people in one garage is hardly enough evidence to justify the broad statements you are making about the government.

   [WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.