Permanent road blocks serve no useful purpose

Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo’s directive that all major road blocks along the northern corridor be removed until further notice is welcome news to many a Kenyan.

It would be hard to find a police practice that causes so much anger and frustration to as wide a spectrum of Kenyans as the perennial road blocks.

The practice is detested because it does not serve any public purpose. It neither checks the putting on the road of defective vehicles, check the killer-speeds in which public service vehicles are driven nor even deter thieves and robbers from getting away with carjacking and other mayhem.

Only the police seem to benefit because as anyone who has travelled in matatus or driven a commercial vehicle knows, a road block is a signal to the turn-boy to get out of the vehicle and give one of the officers manning the barrier something “small” to allow the vehicle to pass around it, which often seems placed in a manner that would test the driving skills of heavy commercial vehicle drivers.

‘Private’ chat

This is why the hope is that the police chief will extend the order to include all roads across the entire country and not until further notice, but indefinitely.

There is no denying that road blocks may be necessary when the police are looking for a specific vehicle or for unauthorized goods which they have reason to believe are being carried from one place to another.

Needless to say, in these instances it would not be necessary for the conductor to have a private chat with an officer manning the road block.

It is to be hoped, too, that even these rare roadblocks will not be placed in locations where they pose a greater danger to the passengers than whatever the police are attempting to forestall. Placing road blocks just before or just after “killer” bridges and corners makes no sense to anyone else except, perhaps, the officers manning them.

Maybe, the officers could share their secret with the public who are, more often than not, left to mourn their dead and injured in accidents that could have been avoided. But sad to admit, Kenyans are not holding their breath because they have heard of similar directives  from police chiefs before only to come across the same road-blocks a few days later — if they were ever removed.