Transport strike paralyses Abidjan for fourth day

COTE D'IVOIRE: Transport strike paralyses Abidjan for fourth day

Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire's economic capital, was paralysed on Monday by a strike launched three days before by public transport operators in protest against the killing of a taxi driver by a policeman. According to reports from other major towns, the strike has also been observered there.

The victim, 20-year-old Keita Kalilou, had been driving in the suburb of Yopougon on Thursday when the incident occurred. Eyewitness quoted by local dailies, including the state-owned Fraternite Matin, said the security officer shot Keita at close range after ordering him to stop. Within hours of his killing, the city's two main transport unions had declared a five-day strike.

Since Friday, economic activities have been severely disrupted in Abidjan. By weekend, the strike had spread to other major urban centres such as Bouake in the centre, and Abengourou in the east. Public transport between the port city of Abidjan and the rest of the country has virtually ground to a halt.

The strike was scheduled to continue on Tuesday.

Negotiations on Sunday between the authorities and the transport unions proved inconclusive, with the drivers calling on the government to take strict measures to prevent further deaths. The two sides were expected to continue negotiations on Monday.

The drivers' unions said that since 1981, 21 public transport drivers had been killed by security officers, including five since December 2001.

"We want to meet the president..... we've already met with the ministers but nothing has changed," a local daily quoted Ouattara Siaka, secretary-general of the federation of professional drivers, as saying on Sunday at a meeting between the unions and representatives of the ministry of transport. "Each time they tell us 'it won't happen again ... we'll pay for the funeral'. That's not important to us. What we want is that they stop killing us."

State-owned Radio-Television Ivoirienne on Friday quoted the interior ministry as saying in a statement that the guilty officer had been arrested and would be charged with voluntary homicide.

A source at the Mouvement ivoirien des droits de l'homme (MIDH), a local human rights NGO, told IRIN on Monday that the incident bore out a recommendation MIDH had made some time ago to the authorities: that traffic control officers should not be armed.