Ezaruku Draku Franklin

Drivers who do not respect the speed limit while driving on Ugandan roads will have to part with Shs2million under the new traffic and road safety amendment act. The bill the parliament of Uganda passed last week also proposes three years imprisonment or both, if the aggrieved driver opposes the express penalty scheme and chooses to go to court and loses the court case.

The new law also seeks to harmonise the provision for standards with the regional players, replacing the “badge” in the Act with “professional driving permit”.

The new law empowers the minister responsible for transport to impose a speed limit and a method of dealing with defaulters through the express penalty scheme as opposed to court prosecution as provided for under the Roads Act, 2019.

Currently, any driver that offends the traffic laws pays a paltry Shs200,000. However, the new law, if accented to by the president places a fine of up to Shs2 million or imprisonment not exceeding three years or both.

Under the amended act, section 119A prescribes that the minister may, by regulations, prescribe speed limits in respect of all public roads or sections of public roads.

“Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, the Minister may, by statutory order, prescribe temporary maximum speed limits for motor vehicles, trailers or engineering plant of different classes or descriptions on any part of any road for such period as may be specified in the order,” part of the amendment states.

It goes on to state that a person who fails to comply with a speed limit set under subsection (1) commits an offence and is liable, on conviction, to a fine not exceeding one hundred currency points or imprisonment not exceeding three years, or both.”

For now, the maximum speed limit in residential areas was revised from 50km/hr to 30km/hr and police say this is because in case of an accident while driving at 50km/hr, one can either severely injure or kill a pedestrian or any other road user.

Rising road crash numbers

Uganda has continued to witness soaring number of road crashes over the years. In 2022, the police crime report showed that a total of 20,394 crashes were reported across the country, out of which 3,901 were fatal, 10,776 serious and 5,717 were minor.

 The report indicated that the number of fatal crashes increased by 16.9% from 3,757 in 2021 to 3,901 in 2022. The number of serious crashes increased from 9,070 in 2021 to 10,776 in 2022, while the number of minor crashes increased from 4,616 in 2021 to 5,717 in 2022.

“Overall, there was a 17% increase in the number of crashes reported in 2022 from 17,443 crashes in 2021 to 20,394 crashes in 2022,” the report says.

Now the legislators say this can only be reduced when there is discipline on the roads and want drivers to be better trained before being issued licences for driving on Ugandan roads.

Legislators yesterday took on the ministry of works officials, wondering why government is still continuing with the analogue system when other countries have already migrated to digital platforms.

They said the ministry officials while meeting the finance committee said the provision is to ensure that the law is aligned to ISO standards of issuance of a driving licence. ISO standards provide for professional driving permits of commercial vehicles including drivers of public passenger service vehicles, goods and vehicles and dangerous vehicles.

The majority committee report however said while the ministry argued that Section 36 was amended to provide for new groupings of driving hcenses in accordance with ISO standards, amendment of Section 45 erroneously retained a driver badge instead of replacing it with the professional driving permit in accordance with the ISO standards.

The committee recommended that all public service vehicles in the country should move onto digital platforms so that their tracking is made easier and where there sanctions, points can be deducted and culprits punished.

Muwanga Kivumbi, the Butambala County Member of Parliament who authored the minority report wondered why the ministry is introducing a professional drivers’ license when the drivers’ license gives drivers options to drive both in Uganda and other countries in the region. He also said government should move to digitalise the driving license so that it’s easier to track down culprits of road crashes and other traffic offenders.

“In other countries, this is digitalized, why are we still using analogue? With the digitalization, if I offend, points are deducted and this can be withdrawn. If you want to go the modern way, digitalise the permits and it will solve the problems you want to address, it will curb road crashes because drivers will be careful not to lose their license,” Kivumbi said.

Kivumbi and his colleagues who authored the minority report however dissented on the provision for new groupings of driving licences in accordance with the ISO Standards, which they said leads to double licensing.

“Requiring a driver to acquire another licence before offering public service transport implies that a driver is licenced twice, which is not only extraneous but also extortionist. We are certain this second licence comes at a cost, yet the Professional Driving Permit is costly coupled with other costs,” the minority report stated.

Currently, a taxi driver obtains a driving licence at a cost of Shs550,000 and is renewed at 210,000/= upon expiry. On top of this, they pay Shs120,000/= for third-party insurance and Shs680,000/= for road licence.

“As per the requirements of Section 70A this same person would be required to pay for another form of licence. We object to this and move that the provision be amended to remove the second accred1tat1on and licence provided under Section 70A (2) (b),” the minority report said.

The minority group also proposed that for one to ride a boda boda on any road in Uganda, one first undergoes mandatory training, accreditation and licensing by the Ministry of Transport.

The badges

Several years ago, when road crashes increased, ministry of works introduced the use of badges for public service vehicles to make tracking of bus drivers easier. At the time of its introduction, many bus drivers would allow conductors and other staff who are not qualified to drive the buses, leading to rampant road crashes.

Ministry of works then introduced the badges so that such would be displayed behind the drivers so that passengers would know which driver is a driving and in case of follow ups, it’s easier to handle the situation.

However, the badges are not internationally recognized and now government through the new law has moved to introduce professional drivers’ permit so that what they have is recognized across East Africa and COMESA.

Nathan Byanyima, the Bukanga North Member of Parliament said while badges served its purpose, there is need to move to a better system that can be easily tracked even when the driver is on the move.

“The badge was introduced because at the time our drivers were giving the buses to turn boys to drive and accidents were rampant so we asked for these badges so that passengers would know that this is the photo of this driver and he or she is the one driving. This had reduced road crashes,” Byanyima said.

Jonathan Odur, the Erute North Member of parliament said while the badge was introduced to control drivers because the then law did not give powers to the transport licensing board to revoke licenses of errant drivers. He said right now, there is no need for badges because internationally recognized systems can take care of tracking indisciplined drivers.

“When we amended this act and introduced the new categories which even now conform to the international standards, the badge automatically falls off because there is no need to have that badge right now. What you need to do is to assess the drivers’ competencies to drive a particular category of vehicles,” Odur said.

Sarah Opendi, the Tororo District Woman Member of parliament wondered why the ministry would want to introduce a professional drivers’ permit which serves the same purpose like the badge instead of introducing better systems to control road carnage.

“When you give me license, it has different classes, so now why are you introducing this? I thought that was already covered under the drivers’ license,” Opendi wondered.

Both the state minister for transport, Francis Musa Ecweru and the Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka said government will come up with regulations to ensure there is discipline on the roads. Both agreed that digital systems will be put in place to have a better traffic management on Ugandan roads.

Uganda’s road safety legislative action plan

Uganda has had to deal with rampant road crashes due both human error, the state of the roads and driving vehicles in dangerous mechanical conditions.

The country’s parliamentary forum on traffic and road safety has set an ambitious plan to curb road carnage in the country. Working with Safe Way Right Way, the forum is focused on improving road safety on Uganda’s economically critical highways. The two have since developed a “Legislative Action Plan” which aims to tackle the indiscipline on Ugandan roads.

The plan was based on a gap analysis of the current Traffic and Road Safety Act, the country profile in the WHO Global Road Safety Status Report 2015, as well as best practice with regards to road design, construction and maintenance. It seeks to address legislative action in policy development, enactment, implementation and evaluation. The Legislative actions are categorised under the UN Decade of Action pillars for road safety.

The action plan will address road safety management in a sustainable and institutionalised manner addressing challenges through stimulating debate in parliament and society on: the urgent nature of action on road safety, institutional weaknesses with road safety, especially the lack of a lead agency on road safety, lack of requisite funding needed for road safety and awareness generation.