Father’s anguish
Written by Millennium on June 25, 2020
LINDA SOKO TEMBO writes
A PARENT of Lusaka’s Mtendere Compound section C is saddened by the untimely death of his four year old daughter who was ran over by a bus as she was trying to cross the road.
Royd Chinyemba the father of the girl who was bashed narrated to the Sun, what happened on Sunday June 21 afternoon around 15:30 hours.
THE SUN: What is your name?
MR CHINYEMBA: My name is Royd Chinyemba the father of the girl who was killed on Sunday late afternoon.
THE SUN: Tell us what happened.
MR CHINYEMBA: As parents we had gone to church and we believe our daughter Grace was in safe hands but how she left home to go to the roadside we can’t explain that. She was born on September 20, 2015 and was our second born daughter
Grace was indoors the whole day, no one can explain the time she moved from the house to go to the roadside.
Grace was someone who used to fear going to play by the roadside but on Sunday we do not know what happened maybe it was a day of her meeting her fate and she went to the roadside.
She was with her friends and she decided to cross the road which demarcates Mtendere and PHI and as she was trying to cross she saw a vehicle which was coming from her right hand side which she concentrated on and not the bus which was coming from her left side.
Grace managed to avoid the vehicle which was coming from her left side and it by passed her but not the one which was on her right hand side. The bus hit her as she had stopped on the road.
The driver tried to apply some breaks but nothing happened he could not avoid hitting the child. He managed to get the girl who was under the bus and rushed her to the Levy Mwanawasa Hospital where she was pronounced dead. She died before they reached the hospital.
The girl sustained some injury on the nose where blood together with the brain was coming out and some saliva was coming out from her month.
My appeal to parents is that we should please take care of our children and let’s make sure that when we are away we entrust them with people who can take care of them to avoid such things happening in the communities.
And a witness Eric Kasomo, programme officer for Africa Directions said he witnessed the incident as he was in the area 15 meters from the scene with his colleagues.
MR KASOMO: What we saw was a girl playing with her friends near the road and she decided to cross the road from Mtendere to PHI. The driver tried to negotiate in terms of applying breaks but it was a bit late because the girl was running fast and when the bus hit her it was too late.
We rushed to the scene and it was disappointing to see passengers who were on the bus demanding for change from the conductor instead of allowing the bus driver to rush the girl to the hospital.
What I feel is that when such a thing happens the life of the child should be put first so that a live can be saved. We managed to convince the passengers who mostly were women so that the child could be taken to the hospital but unfortunately she passed on.
Mr Kasomo appealed to the Local authority for speed humps, speed limit and road signs in the road to avoid children being hit by vehicles.
He said it was difficult to keep children indoors as most of the homes were not in wall fences.
Mr Kasomo urged government to come up with recreation facilities to prevent the children from playing on the streets.“If we have enough play grounds for children they will not be in the streets”.
Meanwhile, Mtendere Ward 30 Councillor, Watson Mtonga was saddened by the death of Grace.
Mr Mtonga said Grace’s life would have been avoided if only the Lusaka City Council (LCC) Engineering Department had put humps along Esther Phiri road because it was not the first time that someone had been hit there.
“Every year we have one or two people being hit by vehicles because the road has no humps I even spoke to the town Clerk Alex Mwansa thatwhat I was fearing has happened again, we have lost a very young life,” he said.
The civic leader said residents of Mtendere were very upset that lack of humps on the road had led to the loss of a young life.