Before digital number plates become a white elephant

The Uganda Police Force (UPF) has released the latest annual crime report, which indicates an increase in crime rates, at a very interesting moment.

Many Ugandan car and motorcycle owners are bracing themselves for a new set of ‘digitalised’ number plates. Each set will set them back by about Shs735,000. The ones used currently cost Shs137,000 for cars and Ss125,000 for motorcycles. The purpose of the change is to ‘curb crime’ occasioned by vehicle/motorcycle users who get away after commissioning crimes. It will also purportedly make it easy to monitor and track stolen vehicles/motorcyles.

Uganda is no stranger to these nouvelle ‘sophisticated’ ideas to fight crime. A few years ago there was a frenzy to register all SIM cards with a looming deadline threat to switch off for those who did not adhere. You had to have a national ID. It became a full time occupation to have that done. The sole purpose was to, yes you guessed right, ‘track and monitor,’ criminals who were communicating using ICT platforms to commit crimes.

You could know who made a call to who, threatening, extorting and abetting or who sent money to who and so on. There was the case of the late Suzan Magara who was brutally murdered by a group of people who kidnapped her and later took a huge ransom which they demanded for, over the phone. So people took it seriously.

Unfortunately, to this day criminals are still using the phone to con people of their money and blackmail them plus commission all manner of crime that phone registration was intended to curb.

In some instances they simply connive with some elements in phone companies and have phones registered under dead and other people’s IDs. In one case a thief plucked off my friend’s car number plate and left behind a phone number on which he was supposed to be paid before he would reveal where the plates were hidden. We checked the number and to our surprise it was not registered. We called him and he said he had been receiving money all day on the very number. Indeed some in the neighborhood paid him and got their plates back. (My friend got one plate back in the process -although he ‘stubbornly’ refused to pay a thief.) How the crook managed to bypass the system, only God knows.

Before long the authorities came up with the idea of installing CCTV cameras on the road to once again as already stated to make it easier to ‘track and monitor’ these criminals, also referred to by the president as ‘pigs.’

This followed a spate of assassinations and drive-by shootings by men on motorcycles. The victims included the late Prosecutor, Joan Kagezi, Maj. Sheikh Muhammed Kiggundu, AIGP Felix Kaweesi together with his driver and body guard, Captain Ibrahim Abiriga and several Muslim clerics. Then we had the cases of Mohammed Kirumira, who was killed with a lady passenger.

The budget was very huge but understandable and there was optimism. But before long Minister of Works and Transport,  Gen. Katumba Wamala’s daughter and driver were killed with the General luckily surviving with injuries. A newspaper report later claimed the CCTV footage of the incident was not ‘easily available to help in the investigations.’ It was the same story in a matter where a supporter of the opposition NUP party, Rita Nabukenya was allegedly run over by a police truck.

We still don’t seem to have got it right despite the fact that some cases like that of the murder of the late Maria Nagirinya and her driver Ronald Kitayimbwa, the suspect was successfully prosecuted partly using the CCTV footage.

Now back to the new plates. There are so many crimes (in fact the majority) that ordinary people are grappling with that have nothing to do with vehicles. Sexual assault, domestic violence, arson, ritual killings, destruction of property, burglary, murder, man slaughter, cybercrime, muggings and bodily harm occasioned by iron bar hit men. What about the theft of crops which is one of the challenges in the rural areas and places where people grow food? The weak argument that the perpetrators escape in cars/motorcycles is as infantile and farfetched as it is a product of fertile imagination.

Any solution to Uganda’s increasing crime rate should first involve looking seriously at the main sticking points that are often overlooked.

Whatever technology is in place will be run by human beings. You need well trained, facilitated paid and motivated police officers. But first, there must also be enough of them. We have a police officer to citizen ratio of about 1-800. In reality it is much lower as there are a good number of very important and not so important persons  who have as many as five to 10 escorts to carry and push their trolleys in the supermarket. These services are at times extended to their children, wives, concubines and girlfriends. Most police officers are not well fed, are without proper communication gadgets, transport, sniffer dogs etc., to respond in real time. We are short of well trained scene of crime officers (SOCO) to help in gathering evidence efficiently. Same case applies to well equipped and manned forensic laboratories. So it is difficult to apprehend criminals. If they are nabbed, it becomes an uphill task to pin them in court because gathering evidence to prove cases beyond reasonable task is no child’s play. In some cases the criminals will pay and compromise the police and other elements within the criminal justice system with more money than they expect to earn in 10 years, to bungle evidence. School and hospital fees will make many fall for a bait or look the other way. All this emboldens criminals and help the cause of organized crime.

In other instances some within the system as exposed by among others, the Justice Julia Sebutinde Commission, hunt with criminals and provide safe passage, protection and insider information plus equip criminals with rented guns and uniforms. Some of the ‘daring’ crimes carried out in broad day light in the city take place under this sacred shelter.

So when anyone comes up with new ideas of expensive technology for curbing crime without addressing these issues, it is not long before it becomes an obsolete white elephant.  In fact, it leaves a cross section of the public skeptic and cynical. They will have a perception that the sponsors of such technology within the system are simply looking for their cut in expensive procurement deals that do little to solve the problem of crime.

Twitter: @nsengoba