The Executive Director for Road Safety Alert Foundation ( RSAF) Joel Jere a civil society platform that does sensitize road users on the dangers of not abiding by road laws has lauded the Inspector General of Police Dr George Kainja for netting traffic cops who have been involved in fraudulent activities for issuing fake receipts to collect revenues on behalf of government.
Mr Jere was reacting to a story that IG Kainja has cracked down all workers involved by arresting them.
Traffic police officers and other officers at Lingazi Police who work in the department of Traffic and transport are suspected to have swindled millions of kwachas through fraud.
“Innocent Malawians ranging from pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists die due to avoidable accidents perpetuated by irresponsible law enforcement agents like the ones at Lingazi police.
“Containing road accidents need to be a multi-sectoral effort that includes law enforcement, governance, ( issue of driving license s and vehicle registration), designs and engineering and awareness campaigns,” but unfortunately our police officers have been our instigators of road accidents,” said Jere in a telephone interview with this publication.
Jere says police corruption is rampant in this country and this compromise efforts to reduce accidents on the roads
“Apart from drink and drive, high speed, poor road networks amongst others ,corruption has taken larger share as conduit of increased road accidents because we have seen vehicles that are not roadworthy find their on the road causing accidents that could have been avoided if someone had done their job professionally. We therefore congratulate our Inspector General of Police for netting his juniors and allow the full arm of the law to take it’s course,” said Jere.
Jere has also applauded the Department of Road Traffic and Safety Services(DRTSS) for intensifying road patrols in most roads of Malawi as one way of deterring and preventing accidents and related crimes.
Of late the country has registered ‘heartbreaking’ roads accidents where many people have lost their lives due to many factors and one major problem has been corruption and bribery done by traffic police officers.
The five suspects who have been netted are Victor Masonga, Emmanuel Magombo, Philip Mwenye Phiri, Theresa Nkhoma, and Dennis Chikuni Banda. The suspects are expected to answer forgery and corruption related crimes in the court of law.
The Inspector General, Dr Kainja instituted an audit following tip off that over K14million has missed at the department as some police officers with other officers were using unofficial Receipt Books in collecting government revenue.09951534, 099262156
Tanzania uses machine printed receipts. Let’s emulate them.