Days after the Rwandese government ditched the Kenya standard gauge railway line for the Tanzanian one, the billion-dollar infrastructure project has run into even more headwinds.
This is after veteran train roof riders warned that the SGR speeds will be too high and dangerous for them. They have thus threatened to go to court. The riders whose umbrella lobby body is the Roof Riders Association had initially wanted to call themselves Rough Riders but found the name had already been taken.
“Riding on the roof of a passenger train that’s moving at 120 kilometres per hour is like a death wish. It’s like they want to cut short my journey in this world,” said one Dandora resident who has been commuting for free since the 1990s.
Consequently the roof riders argue that the government should either provide them with wind protection shields or reduce the speeds so that they can ride on the train roofs safely and comfortably.
The riders said they have done this for years and to suddenly bring in trains that have such high speeds would negatively affect their way of life.
“Alternatively if the government can’t build wind protection shields on the roofs of the SGR trains, the National Transport and Safety Authority should step in and enforce a speed limit,” said the secretary general of the Roof Riders Association.
The roof riders lobby group already has an ideal speed they are proposing.
“We would be comfortable with anything below 20 kilometres per hour... our lives are more important so it doesn’t matter if the journey to Mombasa takes two weeks instead of the projected time of under four hours,” argued the SG of the RRA. At such speeds, the RRA noted, it will even be possible to have hawkers on the roof selling the roof riders water, sweets, airtime and even blue movies.
Roof riders
“It just goes to show that the government could even create more informal jobs if it just listened to us a little,” argued the RRA secretary general. “We can be as economically beneficial as the paying cabin passengers.” The group has long insisted that riding on the roofs of the trains is the healthiest form of transport since it dramatically reduces the spread of communicable diseases such as TB, which can easily spread in cramped spaces with poor ventilation.
“Roof riding on trains offers the best ventilation in the world,” said the RRA SG. “Plus since you can’t drink or smoke while riding on the roof; so on that count we tend to have a longer lifespan!” Besides the future standard gauge railway line, the lobby group for the roof riders also has demands with regards to how the current trains are being operated.
The RRA also say that with recent developments in technology, operators of the current slow trains also need to provide free wi-fi on the roofs of trains. “We know that the current paying passengers rarely even have seating space leave alone wi-fi but there’s no harm in being ambitious and asking for wi-fi for us non-paying roof passengers,” the SG noted.
Citing scientific research, the roof riders say such high speeds exposes them not just to falling off trains but also chest complications. “We also can’t have a decent conversation with our roof mates at such speeds... and worse we can’t text or log on to Twitter, Whatsapp and Facebook because we are busy clinging trying not to fall off,” said the group’s secretary general.
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