Editor, RE: “Cashless bus fair system should be made optional” (The New Times, March 9). I am always rather suspicious when service providers try to compel their customers into specific methods of payment rather than provide options from which their customers may choose in accordance with their own convenience and preferences. Of course a prepaid card, like all automated payment systems, has lots of benefits for the service provider, for their accountants because of their ease of recording and processing almost in real time, their bankers and the card processors. They may also be of value to customers as long as they are one among many options available to them. But they become inconvenient straitjackets the moment they become the compulsory and only option. We should remember that the primary business of a transport company is to move people as conveniently and smoothly as possible from point A to point B for a fare. There are not in business to experiment or to promote any kind of payment method. That is the role of financial services providers (if they so wish), not that of transport companies. And so, by all means let our city bus companies introduce prepaid cards for passengers to use to pay for their fares if they wish, but as an additional way of paying, not as the sole method. Some of us prefer to use cash – and we also have a right to use city buses that have been granted public monopolies to ply our routes, whet her we don’t want or are unable for whatever reason to use prepaid cards, as long as we have the cash to pay for our fares. Mwene Kalinda ********************** Mwene Kalinda’s opinion has some salt vis-à-vis to accessibility of the public services. The problem I am seeing here is that most of Rwanda decision-makers/implementers most of the times tend not to think about transition periods and the impact of certain changes towards the service receivers. Some policies are good and in line with the country development but their implementation always need proper studies by qualified experts instead of one manager coming up with the decision to be implemented with immediate effect. Hak
