The police leadership has appointed and inducted 63 Assistant Superintendents of Police (ASP) to replace some of their colleagues in the traffic police directorate who were recently regraded over service-related misconduct.
The officers were regraded by the Professional Standards Unit after numerous complaints from drivers, that some traffic officers were extorting money from them for dubious traffic offences. Some of the officers had been severally complained about while others had previously been charged in police courts.
Regrading in the forces means transferring an officer from a specialised unit to an ordinary or general duty unit. In the case of police, general duty refers to officers on standby to be deployed for any available assignment.
But a new team of ASPs who have been serving as station detectives or office administrators could not be deployed into the traffic police directorate before they are inducted with traffic-related knowledge and skills. They have now undergone 13 weeks of training in securing and managing traffic crash scenes, integrating science in crash investigations and preparing evidence for traffic crash prosecution.
ASP Musa Ainomugisha, who spoke on behalf of the inducted colleagues said the course was very crucial for them because they hardly had knowledge about traffic scene management and investigations.
Most of the ASPs who are going to become traffic commanders at police stations, divisions, and district headquarters have been drawn from the Directorates of Criminal Investigations, Chief Political Commissariat, Operations and Human Resource Management.
The Police Director for Human Resource Development AIGP Godfrey Golooba said that the induction course was vital for officers who were going to serve in the new directorate. Golooba urged the inducted officers to use their skills to improve road safety.
“People say that our roads are bad and narrow, but I want to say that although they may be a little bit narrow, road users especially drivers are undisciplined. Even where there is a traffic officer, someone who is impatient will always cause an accident,” Golooba said.
Golooba reminded new traffic officers that the population they are going to serve knows them as the most corrupt. He asked the officers to avoid anything that is related to corruption while they are executing their duties.
Every day Uganda loses 12 people in traffic crashes but very few of the culprits end up in court. For instance, 4,159 people were killed in road crashes in 2021 but the police report does not have the number of people prosecuted for committing traffic offences that resulted in accidents.
Road safety advocates like Sam Bambanza who is the director of Hope for Traffic Accident Victims (HOVITA) have consistently attributed the low prosecutions of road crash culprits to a lack of still-in post-crash investigations.
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