Touts urinate on passengers

Commuter omnibus touts at the Fourth Street rank in the centre of Harare are reportedly in the habit of spraying unsuspecting passengers with urine while they board Kombis at the rank.

According to reports from the Capital, the touts urinate in used soft drink plastic bottles and strategically place the urine filled bottles on the road where Kombis drive over them splashing urine all over the waiting passengers.

In a complaint presented to Bulawayo24 and also discussed on ZBC's Radio Zimbabwe on Thursday morning, passengers complain that the touts find it to be a lot of fun and a good game as they laugh and cheer every time the urine bombs explode on the unsuspecting members of the public.

In a very worrying message sent through to Bulawayo24, a member of the public who has been victim to this very uncivilised act by the touts says that the touts work hand in hand with the drivers of the Kombis. The lady claims that the way drivers aim at driving on top of the urine filled plastic bottles shows that they also will be very aware of what they are doing and are part of the game.

"The drivers see the plastic bottles from afar and immediately increase speed and drive on the bottles so strategically that the urine splashes like a bomb spraying people in the queue to board the taxis," says the lady.

In a hard hitting discussion on Radio Zimbabwe, members of the public expressed their utmost anger at this very clumsy behaviour by the touts. Members of the public questioned why the police who will be patrolling the area and are aware of the act do not arrest the touts and drivers for public indecency.

It is claimed that the touts are almost always drunk as they drink opaque beer called Batai Munhu and very toxic Mozambican brews known as "Tatankau" and ZED. According to members of the public, police officers see them drink in public and so nothing to control them.

"The police are aware of this ill and always turn a blind eye to the whole thing as we see the police laughing and shaking hands with the drunk and disorderly touts in open," said one passenger.

In another revelation members of the public phoning into the Radio Zimbabwe Morning Show, claimed that this act is there in almost all the Commuter omnibus ranks in major urban centres in the country. The act is also said to be common at the Renkini Long Distance Bus Terminus in Bulawayo.

A caller from Bulawayo also shocked people when he claimed that at times the touts defecated inside empty Shake Shake boxes and close them and carefully put them on the road for Kombis to drive over them and make a bomb of human faeces and spray people walking by on the sides of the road.

No comment could immediately be obtained from the police who asked that the questions be sent to the police head quarters in Harare in writing.