Ongata Rongai residents in Nairobi are fed up with services rendered by corrupt and hell-bent traffic police assigned to man Magadi road. Enough is enough! Residents and motorists plying magadi road have castigated traffic police officers in Ongata Rongai for their ineptness, corruption and open bribery.
These law enforcers have established an extortion ring at strategic points between Bomas of Kenya, Multimedia Univeristy and Maasai lodge junction where they use these points to pay police their ‘dues’ to allow them overtake and reach faster! Upon payment, these notorious “matatu za ronga” or otherwise known as “matatu za wire” are therefore free to obstruct and/or overtake aimlessly. These matatus overlap in full glare of police officers and worse still, they smile and communicate with coded language with conductors and drivers allowing them to perpetrate this evil! It’s now official; each traffic officer on Magadi Road collects between Ksh 10,000 -Ksh 15,000 per day. This therefore becomes the avenue by which these matatu madness reigns!
Selected matatus are allowed to overtake aimlessly even when there are police on the roads. It hurts to see a police officer smiling to a matatu driver who is on the wrong and instead of stopping that matatu, the police officers are seen speaking in a coded language and this allows crazy snarl-up in Ongata Rongai.
Residents and innocent motorists using this road are accusing the rogue traffic police officers for demanding Sh. 20, 000 bribes per matatu per month failures to which they would end up in court and pay Sh. 50, 000 adding that the officers ask the operators to choose the bribe or the court fine. There are numerous complaints from the public and road users that traffic police officers in Ongata Rongai collect and extort bribes from these matatu people even in broad day light! Ongata Rongai residents are requesting Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to launch a secretive surveillance along this road - magadi road all the way from Bomas of Kenya to Rongai shopping center so as to detect all those behind this.
Njenga Solomon, Ph.D
DEAN- School of Governance, Peace and Security
Africa Nazarene University
DISCLAIMER: These are my own views and NOT of the Institution I work for
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