SEVENTEEN people have died on the spot while two others are nursing injuries in an accident that happened at the junction of Mumbwa and Mwembeshi roads in Lusaka’s light industrial area.
Police spokesperson Charity Munganga said in an interview that the accident occurred yesterday in the morning around 7:50 hours when the driver of a truck registration number AAH 7373 tried to cut in front of a Toyota Hiace minibus registration number ALH 5968.
The dead include 13 males, three females and a baby.
Mrs Munganga said the 17 were part of the 19 passengers on the Lusaka-bound Toyota Hiace minibus. She said the 17 who died include the driver of the minibus, conductor and a baby.
She said the driver of the truck is on the run and the police have launched a manhunt for him.
“The minibus had 19 people on board, 17 of whom died on the spot. The two surviving victims have been admitted to the University Teaching Hospital (UTH). So far, none of the victims have been identified. The driver of the truck was alone,” she said.
However, an eye-witness who was at the scene when the accident happened told the Sunday Mail that the driver of the Toyota minibus was the one who caused the fatal accident.
“The minibus driver was behind a taxi driver who had signalled and given way to the truck driver. The minibus driver in full speed probably without realising why the taxi driver had stopped left his lane in pursuit of a passenger at a junction.
Unfortunately the truck was already in motion and went and hit into the bus. The driver of the truck and the people he was with all jumped out and ran. But they were all injured as they were bleeding,” said the eye-witness.
He said a mob managed to apprehend the injured passengers from the truck who were later taken to the hospital.
However, UTH spokesperson Mwenya Mulenga said seven victims from the accident are admitted to the medical facility.
Mr Mulenga confirmed in an interview that two of the seven victims are in a critical condition.
“We received seven victims from the Mumbwa-Mwembeshi junction road accident; three males and four females. Two are in critical condition. The seven were brought around 09:30 hours in the morning,” he said.
Comment: Sad indeed. These Lusaka minibus drivers are fools who don’t even listen to passengers. Now see what has happened? Some children will be fatherless. Are they possessed by demons or are these some kind of human sacrifice ?
These bus drivers seem to have their own rules and it’s endangering passengers and other road users.
Unfortunately it’s difficult to come up with s good bus system in developing nations but something has to be done about their impatience
These PF ZP, they can’t even identify the driver of the minibus?
17 Zambians, and can not be identified, do they care these PF? what a government.
…too many inconsistences…earlier we are told ‘the driver of the truck was alone’…later we are told …’the driver of the truck and the people he was with….’..other media sites are claiming 19 died on the spot and that the accident happened around 09hrs….
……the mob ‘apprehended’ the injured passengers….’apprehend…??’..as if they had committed any crime…..if they seemed to be running away from the scene…they were just confused….the driver of the truck used initiative to disappear from the scene just to run away from the mob justice…even tho he was not in the wrong according to the eye witness…he will soon surrender himself to the police….the minbus driver must be between 19 and 25yrs….the most dangerous age group PSV drivers on our roads…..
These minibuses are deathtraps every time I’m on holiday and seat in these things I’m playing Russian Roulette with two bullets in the chamber , we take a cavalier approach to our lives these Toyota Hiace type buses should slowly phased; you simply can not modify a 10 seater to 20 seater without compromising safety…the associations that oversee the transport do not care about safety of passengers and the regulators are also transporters and compromised….we need a complete overhaul review of Passenger Road transport within towns.
I gotta agree with you @ Jay Jay… I don’t understand why the buses get modified just to stuff in extra people at a huge catastrophic risk to the people’s lives. And to imagine we have laws and agencies responsible for road safety is a shocker.
And you are right, we should never be using these vans for public transport… we need much bigger buses and they should phase them and restrict them to hotel tourist pickups.
Regulators should never be allowed to be running these types of businesses as that is conflict of interests. This country is really stone-age.
These police ar the most *****s,they hav become friends to bus drivers such that they cant discipline them and they can stop on the road, misbehave, and chima police is smiling.bafikala bapolice we hav no confidence in u anymore
@ Jay Jay…..”you simply can not modify a 10 seater to 20 seater without compromising safety”…..your statement is loaded and regulators pay a blind eye as vehicles come with clear specifications from the manufactures! Its really painful that lives should continue to be lost in road carnage due to carelessness by drivers and incompetence most likely arising from dubiously acquired driving documents including corrupt road user law enforcement agents. Its high time RTSA tightened monitoring and checking of motorists if not introducing more stringent measures on all roads and users even if it means more inconvenience to those privileged to drive! For how long will loss of lives in such big numbers continue? Mind you most of the people that perish in such senseless accidents are the…
One should see how they deliberately cause blind spots along Chilumbulu road in Lusaka. Ngawalandako ati ponooo! Very sad reading indeed. If passengers and other road users can also help in ensuring that they use the citizen’s arrest on such, a bit of sanity might just return to the traffic flow!