The Moura Company - 14 years serving Cape Verde

The Moura Company public carrier will mark, next twenty ninth of the following month, Sunday, its fourteenth year of existence. Confronted to talk about the course of the Enterprise of this lapse of time, its President of the Board of Directors reminds the early days when it had the kick off with five buses. Nowadays, it possesses a fleet composed of one-hundred buses and employs two-hundred heads of family. Despite the international recognition, the businessman regrets that the government, since 2001, has been deliberately plotting against His carrier, in way to suffocate it.

The Mou­ra Company carrier will mark, next twenty ninth of the following month, Sunday, its fourteen year of its existence. The Moura, as the enterprise of public transport is commonly known, started to operate in March, 1996, in urban zone of the city of Praia. Then, it disposed of a humble fleet composed of five second-handed buses, which Mr. Antonio Moura, former emigrant, brought along with him from the United States of America when he decided o return and invest all his savings in his country, complying with the request of the former prime-minister Carlos Veiga. “He gave me the whole warranty to create my enterprise, of which, despite the constraints emerged in course of time, I´m not repented”, reminds the above-mentioned businessman. From those five buses, just one is still operating. Nowadays, the remaining are parts of the museum that the Moura Company keeps as trophies of the enterprise

In the meantime, the early years of the life of the enterprise were not favorable. The Moura Company had to face two competing carriers better equipped and with a physical presence in the market for a long time: The Solatlantico and the state-enterprise Transcor that led the market. As Mr. Antonio Moura reminds, when the buses started to operate, there were rumors that the enterprise could not bear and keep on the market for even three months.

 Contrary to the expectation, the Moura Company had an exponential boom: nowadays, it disposes of a fleet composed of more than 120 buses, carrying, monthly, as his president underlines proudly, more than the double of the population of Cape Verde, without counting on the free-passes and the agents of public authority that travel gratuitously”. Despite the crisis, the enterprise has already employed more than 200 heads of family.

These are the numbers that should be shown everywhere in the world, but for the self-made man, during all these years, not everything went on as he expected. “The  balance-sheet for the 14 years of the existence of the enterprise is both partially positive and negative, due to some constraints which the enterprise went through from 201 up to the present time”, he confirms. Moving backwards in time, the Moura had even employed around 360 heads of family.

The singular working timetable has affected the enterprise

Not long ago, the enterprise was forced to fire over 50 workers, what, as far as its president, is due not because of the international crisis, but to “the continuing persecution of the government against its enterprise”. For, according to Mr. Antonio Moura, due to the specificity of the rendering service, the crisis does not affect the public carriers. What has disturbed the accounts of the enterprise, he stresses, was the implementation of the singular working timetable. “ It’s obvious that this new timetable affected the enterprise, before, for the people to go to work they went round four times but now, only two. Consequently, the Moura Company withdrew fifty percent of its buses from the lines. In compensation, it introduced buses in the rushing hours, a moment of broader carriage, namely from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm.

The illicit competition of the Hiaces

The illicit competing of the Hiaces is, according to Antonio Moura, a headache that has been afflicting the enterprise since 2001. “It´s a competition prepared to wipe out the Moura Company”, he points out his finger to the government, which, in his opinion, does not fulfill its obligations, namely the interdiction of the Hiaces circulating in the urban spaces. Despite the complaints of my company and from another, the government keeps on pretending that a foolish question requires no answer. to the extent of not paying attention to our appeals.

No businessman in the area would be satisfied with this situation: the government cannot benefit of its power and influence to make bad use of the enterprises”, underlines, reminding that the Hiaces are disbanded to operate within the inter-urban spaces. Besides operating in default of the law, this illicit competition is aggravated with the application by the Hiaces a tariff a little bit inferior of that commended publicly by law in relation to buses. “Taking into account that this little difference represents a lot to the majority of passengers, the buses end up travelling almost empty”. “We assume an enormous expenditure, without any compensation whatsoever. This made the company to have fewer buses in operation”. In view of all these situations, Mr. Moura affirms coldly: “The crisis the company is facing comes from the government”. He points out the lack of incentives, the illicit competition of the Hiaces, the gratuitous carrying of the agents of the public authority and other State authorities as some of the factors that have been suffocating the Moura Company financially. Without being able to quantify the number of agents of public authority that use daily the services of the Moura Company, Antonio Moura, includes in this list coastguards, traffic policemen, public authority agents, maritime policemen, forestal agents, prison guards, retired agents, bailiffs and finance supervisors. In this particular, he reminds that at the time of the extinct state subsidized carrier, Transcor, only three equipped policemen were allowed to travel the buses gratuitously. “The policemen, who enter the buses following the first three, had to pay.”Not happy with this, the government subsidized the Transcor of several ways, he says, questioning why shouldn´t the government subsidize the Moura Company, which renders an indispensable service to the market. “It´s not correct that a private enterprise, which shoulders the national and international financial burdens with the institutions, so that the country can stay endowed with   a modern carrier, all the conditions foreseen by the law are not created for a normal operation “It´s important to stress that the government itself forces our enterprise to be in deficit, like wise it went with the TACV to the bankruptcy”, he comments.

The International Recognition

According to Mr. Antonio Moura, despite the primordial objective of his enterprise is the profit, the Moura Company contributes for a greater motion of people in the city of Praia, either for the displacement to its places of work, or for the selling of its products. “In the meantime, we have a government which ignores the work that the Moura Company has been carrying out in favor of the social and economical development of Cape Verde, in the creating of the deliberating mechanisms and demandative actions in order to suffocate the enterprise, he underlines”.

The way, he affirms, the work of the enterprise is dully recognized by the government, the successive awards/prizes in recognition of the quality of its service rendering, ascribed in 2005 – Paris, in 2006 – Frankfurt and in 2007  Geneva, illustrates the respect and admiration that the enterprise enjoys before the international institutions

Another international recognition came from Guine-Bissau, where the President of the Board of Directors of the Company is right now, as an invitation of the government of that African country, aiming at the studying of ways to solve problems related to the maritime and terrestrial liaison, whose granting contract will be soon signed.