Thanks Police for Fika Salama
What you need to know:
- Penalties for offences such as driving without a permit tend to be around $50, so not a strong disincentive, while prosecution for more serious offences is very slow, meaning none of the recent lethal cases have gone to trial yet.
- About 200 people have died on the road alone since January 2016.
The Fika Salama operation by the Uganda Police’s traffic department has begun to pay off. The operation was started in August on Kampala-Masaka road after a spate of accidents that claimed on average 33 people per month, with one single accident in June claiming 22 people.
The popular talk then from motorists and all sorts of “roadside experts” was that the only recently constructed Kampala-Masaka-Mbarara road was narrow and not fit to be described as a highway. They also claimed it was poorly designed and was slippery at many point causing vehicles to slide off!
The police and Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA), as well as some road users and “inexpert experts”, however, maintained that the problem was driver indiscipline that was manifested in speeding, overtaking at blind spots, reckless driving, etc.
After one month, it is clear where the problem was in the first instance. The Fika Salama – which means Arrive/Reach Safely in Kiswahili – has at the last count reduced accidents to two in the month of September!
Police and all other agencies involved should be commended for a great job done. Yes it has not come easy! Over the period of the operation up to this point, at least 2,960 errant drivers were arrested, charged and jailed or fined heavily. This action was sobering to many as the police spared nobody – whether you were driving a government or private car, whether you knew somebody high up or not, it just did not help once you were caught on the wrong side of the traffic law.
This operation has been rolled out to other highways and Kampala-Gulu has also seen a significant drop in fatalities since. The question many Ugandans will be asking is whether the Police is able to sustain this for a long period and on many more routes.
The success of Fika Salama on the highways needs to be replicated in the urban centres especially Kampala metropolitan where more than 60 per cent of vehicles in the country run every day. Kampala motorists are notorious for driving on shoulders, creating multiple lanes and weaving to try and beat the traffic jams.
It is this attitude that they take to the highways with deadly consequences. The driving indiscipline therefore needs to be cured on both the highways and in the city where it is bred and perfected.
