Lawyer petitions Works ministry over digital number plates roll-out

A lawyer has petitioned the Ministry of Works and Transport to halt the ongoing fitting of the digital number plates with tracking devices on vehicles. 

The fitting aims at facilitating security agencies electronic monitoring of all vehicles to stamp out criminality in the country.

In his petition dated November 2, Hassan Male Mabirizi contends that there are two pending cases he filed before the East African Court of Justice in Arusha, Tanzania, contesting the exercise.

He added that the cases haven’t been determined by court and that it would be unwise for the government to continue with this exercise, which is still under contestation.

“You have gone ahead to launch the same impugned programme well aware of Article 38 (2) of the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community, which states that where a dispute has been referred to the court, the partner states shall refrain from any action which might be detrimental to the resolution of the dispute or might aggravate the dispute,” Mr Mabirizi contends in his letter to the Works ministry.

He added: “This is to require you to halt the vehicle tracking number plates’ process until final determination of the two references or else face consequences of undermining an international court in East African Court of Justice.”

On Wednesday last week, government through a Russian firm, Joint Stock Company Global Security, rolled out the digital number plates exercise, starting with government vehicles.

The rest of the vehicles, according to the roll-out programme, will commence in February next year, and the tracking devises are to be fitted at the motorists’ cost.

New vehicle and motorcycle owners will pay Shs714,000, while swapping  existing plates will cost Shs150, 000 for motor vehicles and Shs50, 000 for motorcycles.

Motorists will face penalties for, among other things, refusing to install the number plates or tampering with them.

Those with already existing number plates, who fail to switch over to installing the new plates within a period of two years, will be liable to pay a fine of Shs2m or serve a one-year imprisonment sentence.

The same penalties apply to motorists who tamper with the tracker within the digital number plate.

President Museveni, during the 2021 State-of-the-Nation Address, said he had instructed the Works and Security ministries to install digital number plates on cars and motorcycles to help in tracking down criminals who use this mode of transport to commit crime and escape undetected.

Such high profile murders included Ibrahim Abiriga, then Arua Municipality MP, who was gunned down in 2018. Others were prosecutor Joan Kagezi, former police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi, attempted murder against Works minister Katumba Wamala, and Muslim clerics, among others.

Mabirizi’s petition to the regional court questions the criteria used by the government to award the number plates tender to the Russian firm.

Efforts to reach out to Works minister Katumba on whether his ministry would halt the exercise were futile as he never answered nor return our repeated phone calls to him.

When contacted last evening, Ms Susan Kataike, the spokesperson of the ministry, declined to comment, saying it is the Justice ministry that is mandated to handle all the legal concerns of government entities.

But when this newspaper contacted the Attorney General, Mr Kiryowa Kiwanuka, he said: “I don’t respond to Mabirizi’s matters. No comment.”