Bus agent refusing to refund fare

Last year I booked two bus tickets for myself and my child aged two years. I intended to travel from the city where I live to another city within the country. I made a booking a day before the date of departure and on the morning of the date of departure I got an emergency and could not travel as planned. An hour before the time of departure I went to the bus agent’s office to ask for cancellation of my booking and to request refund of the fare I paid. The bus agent cancelled my booking but refused my request for refund of fare. He argued that the company policy did not allow refund of the fare paid by a passenger. Is this legally allowed? What action can I take?
AA, Tanga

To start with, it was wrong for the bus agent to charge fare for a child aged 2 years. Regulation 3 read together with 36(2) of the Transport Licensing (Public Service Vehicles) Regulations, 2020 exempt children aged three years or below from paying bus fare. It is an offence to charge bus fare for such a child and the penalty for that offence in view of regulation 42(1) ranges between TZS 200,000 and 500,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years.

The refund of the bus fare is also regulated by the Transport Licensing (Public Service Vehicles) Regulations, 2020. Under the Regulations, the right to have the refund of the bus fare paid by a passenger depends on the time when the cancellation of booking is done and refund is asked for or the cause of cancellation and the refund of fare. Where a passenger himself cancels a booking, 24 hours or more prior to the departure time, the bus agent or the bus operator is obligated to refund the full fare paid by the passenger. However, if the cancellation is made less than 24 hours but more than twelve hours prior to the departure time, a passenger is entitled to a chance to change the date or time of travel or a refund of not less than 85 percent of the paid fare. Unfortunately, the law is silent on what is the right of a passenger who cancels her or his booking less than 12 hours before the time of departure. The bus agent might have taken advantage of this gap in the law to deny the refund of the fare you paid him.

Since the law is silent on the refund of fare where cancellation of booking is done less than 12 hours before the departure time, you can lodge your complaint with the Land Transport Regulatory Authority to seek interpretation and ask for a relief. The Authority has power under section 34(1) of the Land Transport Regulatory Authority Act, 2019 to order refunds and impose a fine for a wrongful act of a bus operator.

Lastly and for your information, a passenger is also entitled to a refund of full fare where cancellation of booking is attributed to bus delay to depart by an hour or more from the time scheduled for departure. A refund of fare may also be claimed where in the course of journey, a bus breaks down and the owner is unable to provide alternative transport. In such a situation the bus operator is required to refund fare equivalent to the remaining distance. A bus operator is supposed to refund a passenger who decides to look for alternative transport due to break down en route within 7 days. Failure to refund fare to the passenger within 7 days provides the passenger with a right to claim a full refund of fare irrespective of the distance covered before the bus broke down.