Tax the money collected by traffic police

Traffic police officers during a crackdown on road unworthy vehicles. [File, Standard] Last week, New Zealand's Inspector General of Police was nabbed by his own police officers for speeding. He had exceeded the speed limit by 2km per hour or something to that effect. The man called a press conference to apologise for his wayward behaviour and said he was waiting for his speed ticket to come through the mail and pay up. I am sure many Kenyans must be thinking: "our very own top cop being nabbed by his juniors manning a roadblock on a highway? Really? Just google it. It happened. For a Sergeant or a Corporal in Kenya to even encompass (to use a word that used to spread terror sometimes back) speaking to the Inspector General of Police is a criminal offence. The man would find himself on the next available transport to Hargeissa or some such god-forsaken place. He would find that traffic policing is not the same as dealing with terrorists armed with grenade launchers against his G3 rifle. This New Zealand top cop should have just pulled some rank and dispatched the offending juniors to the aboriginal forest instead of interfering with the right to break laws by the high and mighty. They would have been stripped of their epaulets and told to go back to their village. And, just to make sure the message comes through - and in case some other junior officer feels emboldened to ever take on their senior - they would receive a few whips publicly, the rascals. But, no. The boss calls a press conference to say sorry, and how he forgot he was driving in a speed restricted zone. We need to import this officer here to give our honchos a lesson in humility. Here, might is always right. A certain vernacular musician said to be poor, only God can come to your aid. And even that is not guaranteed. On our highways, police officers look the other way as our cabinet secretaries and their fleet of guzzlers break all traffic rules. They will overtake in blind corners, overlap (Kenyan parlance for overtaking on the wrong side of the road), while their security detail are waving radio handsets just in case you may not appreciate that you are dealing with a man well-guarded by a mean close protection detail. The police officers will never dare stop such. Nor will they stop any car that looks it might be carrying someone 'important'. No. They will go for the average personal cars for middle class people and without flinching, accuse them of all manner of made up offences. Somewhere in the Rift Valley, I hear there is a section of the highway where local police officers have introduced their own speed limit sign, where they camp for a whole day catching unwitting motorists willy nilly. In the evening, they pack the signpost along with the loot they've collected ready for another busy day. Talk of impunity. Nobody can convince me that the entire security apparatus in the North Rift is unaware of such open abuse. My thinking is that the entire traffic department should be disbanded and the officers moved to, say, the anti-stock theft unit or some other unit where they have to do proper work. The reasoning being these guys do not add any value whatsoever to our country; they are just tax collectors for their bosses and their families. I have always argued that if the government was serious about sorting out the traffic mess, they should first ask each and every roadblock unit to account for every day of their work. They should have a ledger stating what they have collected from which matatu and overloaded truck, and such money should then be taxed accordingly. The writer is a communications consultant

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