Police resume drive on traffic penalty scheme
A police officer controls traffice flow at the traffic lights on Jinja Road in Kampala in February. Police will today resume operations to recover Express Penalty Scheme (EPS) arrears from errant motorists. PHOTO/FRANK BAGUMA
What you need to know:
- The operation starts at a time when traffic on the road is expected to be high as parents take children back to school for Second Term.
The police are to resume operations to recover Express Penalty Scheme (EPS) arrears from errant motorists today, months after investigations into suspected fraud in the system.
The deputy spokesperson of the police, Ms Polly Namaye, said motorists with EPS ticket arrears should pay or their vehicles would be impounded.
“Starting tomorrow (today), the Traffic Police will be actively recovering Express Penalty Scheme arrears countrywide,” Ms Namaye said yesterday.
“We urge all drivers to clear any pending arrears on EPS tickets to avoid any inconveniences,” he added.
The operation starts at a time when traffic on the road is expected to be high as parents take children back to school for Second Term.
The government is demanding billions of shillings from EPS defaulters, but the recovery of money from the issued EPS tickets has seen challenges as it was discovered that the IT system was manipulated by police officers and deleted names of defaulters in the system make it difficult for enforcement officers to trace them.
Unpaid EPS tickets amounting to Shs5 billion had been illegally removed from the recovery system allegedly by police officers.
A traffic police commander said they have been able to recover details of all the defaulters that were in the system before the system was compromised.
The police report of 2022 indicates that the enforcement officers recovered Shs4.3b in unpaid EPS tickets last year.
Last year, the police issued EPS tickets worth Shs17.7 billion, but only Shs2.2 billion that were issued in the same period was collected despite the introduction of modern gadgets to track down defaulters.
Background
The EPS was introduced as an instant alternative punishment to errant motorists so that they can avoid the traditional inconveniencing police where the suspects are arrested, detained and they spend time and money in lengthy court processes.
But the scheme, which was intended to inflict financial pain in the errant motorists’ pockets and generate non-taxable revenue to the government, hasn’t been able to curb accidents or indiscipline on the roads nor is it generating funds as the planners anticipated.
The Finance ministry often gives the percent of the funds received from the EPS tickets to the police to deal with welfare challenges.
Plot
Records in Parliament reveal that the government is planning to invest in CCTV cameras to use the Intelligent Transport Monitoring System set up by Joint Stock Company Global Security, a Russian owned firm, to automatically detect errant motorists on the road and also issue tickets that instantly send message to their mobile phone as in the case in Rwanda.
