Driving car without number plates attracts Shs100,000 penalty 

This publication on Wednesday tweeted a black Mercedes Benz GLE Coupe that parked at Aga Khan Primary School in Kampala without number plates. When a traffic officer approached the driver (a lady), she said it belonged to her husband whom she later said had other cars that equally didn’t have number plates before driving away. 
 
There have also been several cases of people covering their number plates with campaign posters of their favorite aspiring politicians. 

Did you know that driving a vehicle without a number plate, or one whose number plates are obscured attracts a penalty of Shs100,000? 
 
Rogers Kauma Nsereko, the Traffic Commandant, Kampala Metropolitan area says motorists who drive vehicles without number plates are aware that they are not supposed to be on the road but do it with impunity. A number plate serves as the identification name for your vehicle through which it can be traced.

“We insist that all vehicles must have registration plates at all times. There are cases of motorists who report cases of stolen number plates from their homes. You are supposed to process duplicate number plates to have something to be identified with before you get back on the road,” Nsereko says. 

The Traffic and Road Safety Act (TRSA) Amendment Act 2023 buttresses Nsereko’s warning. Motorists with covered number plates, those that are obscured and those that are fading and cannot be easily read from a distance must also process duplicate number plates. Nsereko does not rule out the possibility that vehicles without number plates could be stolen because thieves steal cars and switch or remove number plates.  

“If having obscured number plates is already an offence, how about those that don’t have them? That’s why we (traffic police) suspect that motorists in vehicles without number plates are criminals,” he adds. 

To get a duplicate number plate, you have to publicise or run an advert in newspapers to announce the loss of your number plate before going to police to report. If you don’t get any responses to recover the advertised number plate, you go to police to clear the number plate as lost. From there, you go to Uganda Revenue Authority and report the missing number plate from where you are given permission to have a duplicate plate. According to Nsereko, this process, including acquiring the duplicate number plate, takes one to two weeks.
 

Impounding the car 
According to the Traffic and Road Safety Act, traffic police is mandated to impound a vehicle without number plates wherever it is seen. The challenge is that they cannot be in all places at all times. This is on top of being penalised Shs100,000 before you begin processing acquisition of duplicate plates. All this applies to motorcycles, tricycles, tractors and buses because they are considered motor vehicles under the Traffic and Road Safety Act.