Two of my friends have encountered rather scary scenarios with the taxi moto cyclists they’ve taken.One of them, Ruth 25, boarded a motorcycle from Kabeza to Kanombe and she gave clear directions to the motorcyclist of where she was heading.The motorcyclist at some point, started taking a different dark route that he claimed was a shortcut however much the girl insisted she wanted him to use the route she was familiar with.He insisted and proceeded with the dark route and confiscated Ruth’s phone at gun point by the way. He had threatened to shoot her the moment she decides to scream or jump off the motorcycle. So he took her to some isolated big house hidden in a place she didn’t know and she found three other girls who seemed to be friends with the motorcyclist.They checked her body and said she was fine and therefore free to leave, after which they escorted her and let her go without letting her look back at the house where they had held her hostage, albeit for a short time.They stole all her property and even beat her up; the motorcyclist wanted to rape her but the other girls stopped him and told him to let her go.It was a very frightening experience that left her traumatised for some time. She couldn’t board motorcycles for over three months because of the experience she went through.Another friend, Christine, was standing by the roadside early one morning waiting for a taxi to drop her to work. Suddenly a motorcyclist came by and the passenger on it, grabbed Christine’s handbag, while she was trying to scream, the same guys grabbed another woman’s handbag that was standing next to her on the same stage. All this happened so fast and were soon speeding away before they could be stopped. All this means, is that not all motorcyclists are interested in taking you to your destination safely and getting their pay. Some are actually crooks and thugs that just want to rob or harm you.This isn’t to scare the public but to remind people to cautious with these guys and get their number plates or better still, get one motorcyclist that you can entirely rely on.Get their telephone number, do small background searches on them for instance, and establish their credibility. This is safer than jumping onto any random motorcycle that rides past you especially, in the night.
