Motorists who have unpaid Express Penalty Scheme (EPS) tickets attached to their driving licence will not be allowed to renew them upon expiry.

This revelation was made by Mr Winstone Katushabe, the Commissioner, Transport Regulation and Safety at the Ministry of Works and Transport during a validation workshop for the development of the National Road Safety Action Plan (NRASP) recently in Kampala.

The overall purpose of the action plan is to develop, implement and evaluate actions that will systematically improve the safety of road transport systems in Uganda over the next five years. The plan sets a new target to contribute to the reduction of the number of fatalities and injuries by 50 per cent by 2030, as the prime objective of the new Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030.

The National Road Safety Action Plan also seeks to implement the February 2020 Stockholm Declaration, to which Uganda is a signatory, that calls for, among other measures, a speed limit of 30km/hour on mixed road use, especially in school zones, urban and built-up areas, and the broad implementation of the safe system’s principles such as safer roads and safer vehicles.

In Uganda, motorists commit traffic offences and sometimes get away with them. Some drivers are penalised with penalty tickets they never pay, while some go unpunished. One of the new ways under final implementation for motorists who do not pay for offences committed is to have them checked at license renewal.

“The Traffic and Road Safety Act 1998 (Amendment) Act 2020 is clear. It provides that for any traffic offender to renew their driving licence, they must ensure that they don’t have any pending express penalty scheme tickets. We are only operationalising and implementing what was in the law that was a gap that the Government realised is part of road indiscipline. If you do not want the Government to inconvenience you by not renewing your licence, then do not misbehave on the road,” Mr Katushabe said.

The amount of money the Uganda traffic police loses in unpaid offences depends on the offences committed. However, these fines also come with a surcharge of 50%. For example, the Government lost UGX48billion in unpaid receipts from traffic offenders from 2007 to 2018.

It should also be noted that since the start of 2022, the number of people dying in road crashes has increased from 10 to 12 people per day, with human error as the major contributing factor.

According to the recently released Uganda Police Annual Crime Report 2021, there was a 42 per cent increase in the number of road crashes reported from 12,249 in 2020 to 17,443 in 2021. The report adds that the number of fatal crashes increased by 15 per cent to 3,757 in 2021 from 3,269 in 2020, with the months of December, October and November registering the highest numbers.

Written by Roland Nasasira.