How safe are you on that moto?

Patrick Brisebois, a Canadian volunteer for a local nongovernmental organisation, carries a helmet wherever he goes though he doesn’t own a motorcycle. He does it for two reasons. “When we come into the country we are presented with the helmet for safety reasons because the ones given by Moto riders are of poor quality and also because of hygiene,” he says. In 2011, an agreement between the City of Kigali, the Ministry of Health and members of various motorcyclists’ associations required all taxi-moto operators across the country to provide their passengers with head gears locally known as Akanozasuku to be worn under the helmets for hygiene purposes. But the requirement was only observed for a short while before things resumed to normal with passengers wearing the helmets without the hygiene gears. Abel Habyarimana, a moto operator around Remera in Kigali, says the cause was noble but not realistic or practical. “As an operator I was expected to carry with me these headgears which were to be bought and disposed of after use. It didn’t make any business sense since we were cautioned against passing the cost to the passengers,” he said, also explaining that the head gears were supposed to retail at Rwf50 each. “This meant that if I ferried twenty clients a day, I would have to part with Rwf1,000 for disposable covers. It would have been more appropriate if everyone carried his or her own,” Habirimana added. Jean Badege, another motorcycle operator around Kicukiro in Kigali, saw the head gears policy in a different light. “The way this policy was introduced and passed sounded like a plan to enrich a few people who would import the covers. I don’t think it was out of the concern of hygiene for the passengers,” he said. Badege says that if it was out of the passengers’ concern, it would have been seen through and not aborted as it was. Habyarimana says that although some clients don’t seem comfortable with the arrangement of having to don helmets that are worn by other people, few ever complain. “I have been in the business for a couple of years now and I have not seen a client refuse to don the helmet citing health risks. Some ladies do carry their own or cover their heads with a leso (piece of cloth) before wearing the helmet.” Most of the humanitarian organisations that offer helmets to their employees and volunteers also cite safety reasons. “Some of the helmets are very old, uncomfortable and do not shield you from anything. They are just meant to fool the authorities. Most of them are not very old but substandard; you drop it and it falls apart,” Brisebois says. Despite the insistence of the helmets, the issue of quality has been tricky. Enforcing authorities are only out to ensure that the helmet policy is enforced but not as to quality of the helmets. Bosco Iradukunda, a Rwandan who doesn’t own a motor bike but prefers to carry his own helmet wherever he goes, says that akanozasuku was a step in the right direction though the policy did lay the burden on the wrong shoulders. “Asking a person who makes less than Rwf10,000 a day to part with some of his income in the name of hygiene was asking too much from them,” he says. Iradukunda carries his own helmet since he was involved in an accident and the helmet provided by the rider led to worse injuries. “I happened to be in a collision of two Motos and when we hit the ground my helmet broke and injured me. It was plastic on the outside and a light Styrofoam cushion covered in a piece of cloth. The helmet fell apart,” he said. For Iradukunda, the difference in quality is even evident in pricing of various helmets. “Why would there be a price difference of more than Rwf10,000 for the helmets?” he asked. He says that the authorities coming up with the policy missed something. “It doesn’t make sense that a rider has a reflector jacket but there is a passenger behind him. The reflector jackets should have been for the passengers but they would probably have raised hygiene issues too especially for ladies whose clothes don’t cover much,” he said. Teta Uwamahoro, a regular client of motos, admits that she rarely thinks about hygiene when she uses the bikes because they are quick and convenient. “The easiest way to go about it would be that anyone who is not comfortable with having to use the communal helmet, bring their own or carry akanozasuku,” she advised.