A new association to protect the interest of commercial motorbike riders in the Buea municipality will soon see the light of day. This was the outcome of a meeting on Friday October 9, between representatives of bike riders and council officials that was held at the council premises in Buea.

Chaired by the first deputy mayor, Mbome Motomby Emmanuel, the meeting came following a scuffle between the bike riders and council officials that resulted in the arrest and detention of seven bike riders on October 1.

According to Motomby, the objective of the meeting was to lay the ground rules for the creation of a bike riders’ association in the municipality.

“Your riders’ association should be as strong as the taxi drivers’ association. You have been operating in dispersed ranks. So what you need to do now is to be under an umbrella association, then order is going to reign in Buea. Those who will be below the age of twenty, as we have agreed upon here, if caught with a bike in this municipality, the bike will be impounded.

Those in the age group of below twenty don’t have respect for anybody. So as bike riders, please start working before the municipality comes in. Send away these teenagers; encourage them to go back to school. Bike riders should be more responsible because there are so many irresponsible bike riders in Buea. If you do these, we are going to prescribe a uniform for bike riders” the deputy mayor elaborated.

The council also agreed to foot up to 50% of the bills for the production of badges for authorized bike riders in the municipality. Some of the concerns often raised by riders in the Buea municipality include the poor state of farm-to-market roads they have been asked to ply and harassment of bike riders by the council’s municipal police.

Responding to the above concern, the deputy mayor said the municipal police is made up of very responsible young men who are just doing their job. The riders were equally proscribed from working on days reserved for the famous ‘keep Buea clean’.

As concerns the measures the council is putting in place to ensure sanity within the bike riding sector, the deputy mayor said: “Here in Buea we have specification as to where bikes should be found. The bikes we find around Muea should not be there. They should be somewhere around the entrance to Lysoka. We don’t want to see bike riders in the urban periphery. Bikes should ply farm-to-market roads, not the urban periphery.”

Pastor Jonas Bissinge reacting on behalf of the bike riders described the move as a solution to the problems of bike riders in Buea. “I noticed a lot of disorder because some people carry about two or three passengers and run on this rough road which is so small and risky. We came here so that we resolve things together and agree on one point we have discussed with the mayor and our limits have been given to us and we are going to respect that.”