NTSA officer monitors speed data from a matatu along Nyeri-Nyahururu
highway during an ongoing crackdown on October 2, 2019. PHOTO | JOSEPH
KANYI
The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) officers will
support the police in the latest round of traffic crackdown meant to
contain rising road carnage.
Earlier reports had
indicated that the road safety agency had been directed by the Interior
ministry to join the traffic police in a new crackdown that commenced on
Tuesday.
But the NTSA director-general last evening denied the existence of such a circular.
NTSA
data shows that traffic accident fatalities for the last 12 months are
up 15 percent, from year’s 2021 deaths. At least 2326 people have been
reported to have died on Kenyan roads in the year to October.
As
of Tuesday and Wednesday, NTSA officers had been deployed to conduct
impromptu checks on all motor vehicles along the Nyeri — Nairobi
highway.
However, NTSA will work in a different
capacity from the past as its officers have been instructed to leave all
enforcement work to the police.
The role of NTSA in the fresh crackdown expected to last up to
January will be purely technical support, sources within the agency have
revealed.
“Our job will only be to guide the police on
the offences and traffic malpractices to look out for. We cannot arrest
or order a vehicle to stop. NTSA is only there to support,” an official
at NTSA who declined to be named as he is not authorised to address the
media said yesterday.
In January, Mr Kenyatta issued a
directive ordering all NTSA officers off roads owing to a rise in road
accidents. The agency was at the time accused of corruption and impunity
in their enforcement duties.
The President had at the time said that traffic police officers should take over duties on Kenyan highways.
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