If there’s no drastic change, one of these days it’s going to be as hard as going to Heaven alive for parents who will be reporting their children to schools, for workers and any other public transport means users to reach their destinations because taxi drivers have plotted to lay down their tools in protest of being charged with multiple Express Penalty Scheme (EPS) tickets.
Kamulit David a taxi owner and a 33 years experienced driver who bases at the Luweero stage in Namayuba Taxi Park narrated to this mighty website that every morning, I check for the EPS status of my taxis using the EPS app I downloaded on my smart phone and should one of my taxis bear a ticket, I pay it immediately using mobile money to avoid a 50% surcharge for late payment or having the taxi impounded.
However on Tuesday morning, I was frozen upon discovering that 5 of my taxis including that has spent a month in a garage were multiple ticketed.
Taxi UBH374U had 3 tickets, taxi UAT391T had 7 tickets, taxi UBA088B had 3 tickets, taxi UAZ 332K had 3 tickets and taxi UAZ473J had 1 ticket.
All these tickets totaled to 2 million.
These tickets placed Kamulit between a rock and hard place wondering how he was going to rise school fees for his soon reporting back to school children and at the same time also pay for the 2 million tickets.
While in that confusion, Kamulit received a phone call from his friend Kasoto informing him that his taxi UAH 325 K hand been impounded for failure to pay 7 tickets
He joined him to Old Kampala Police station where they met a group of tax drivers who had fallen victim of being multiple ticketed. The OC traffic at the station asked them to take their complaints at the Traffic police National Headquarters in Natete and it’s there an officer called Sande arrogantly told them that they had got two options, to either pay for their tickets or accept their taxis to be impounded”
This statement badly broke their hearts.
SURPRISING FACTS ABOUT THESE TICKETS
1)All the victimized drivers are being charged of the same offence “careless” which is not written anywhere in the Traffic offences
2)All the multiple tickets that are served to each taxi read the same time and place which’s practically impossible.
3)The tickets carry no names of the Traffic Officer serving them
4)The tickets come with no URA’s Payment Reference Number(PRN)
5)All the tickets are for last year between August and December which means all the ticketed taxis are reliable to a surcharge for late payment of 50% because an offender has to pay for the ticket within 28 days.
6)All the tickets served name the taxi owner as the offender not the driver.
OVER 500 TAXIS HAVE FALLEN VICTIM OF MULTIPLE TICKETING
According to Rashid Ssekindi,the President of Uganda Transport Operators Federation(UTOF) this unfair severe situation began on Monday last week and over 500 taxis had fallen victim of multiple ticketing and the most affected taxis are those that use the Makerere Hill road and Sir Apollo Kaggwa road.
Mr.Ssekindi based here to assert when they received such complaints, as leaders, they didn’t take the matter for granted. “We addressed the matter to Hajjati Minsa Kabanda, the Minister for Kampala who asked us for a month to handle the matter rightly once and for all.”
He concluded by begging all taxi drivers and owners to keep calm and continue working.
Though most of the drivers seem to have adhered to Ssekindi’s call, there’s a disgruntled group that has continued to mobilise drivers to demonstrate on ground that since Ssekindi failed to convince the relevant authorities to issue an an interim order forbidding traffic officers from impounding their taxis, they therefore just can’t keep calm for a month because they have got families to feed, bills to pay and other related responsibilities.
They say that they must demonstrate such that their matter can be handled urgently.
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