My dear traffic policeman….

It is common for us drivers to see you every day when we go to and return from work. If we do not see you, we know that you might have hopped a ride in somebody’s car or may have walked nearby for a quick lunch or drink.

We appreciate that you spend many hours every day controlling traffic instead of monitoring the road for offenders but wonder why you do this when traffic lights are working. When you decide to individually control traffic, drivers are not convinced that you are trying to help because almost always there are traffic congestions when you take control. Often we even see you fiddle with working traffic lights, which is rather strange because traffic lights can be programmed to work as required. Human control of traffic lights defies the very purpose why the lights were first installed. This type of control is amusing to tourists who go back home to tell others how backward we are despite our other developments.

When controlling traffic you well know that you cannot control pedestrians but yet you condone this at great risk to them. Ironically at some intersections where traffic lights are very much needed but have not been installed, you are almost always missing thereby leaving drivers vulnerable to accidents. Take the intersection of Pugu Road with Lugoda Street where the central railway line crosses. This junction has seen many accidents, some even involving trains, but yet continues to reign in traffic chaos because it is left unattended.

Sometimes some of you misguide responsible drivers. You instruct motorists to drive straight through when the traffic lights are signalling only a right or left turn. By doing so you create a precedent for drivers to break the rules again in your absence. For example at the junction near the Royal Palm Hotel you will note that cars almost always drive through on the left turn signal and similarly at the Namanga junction cars take a left turn on a right turn signal thereby stopping pedestrians from crossing the road even when they have a green signal.

Again there are times when you and your mates behave dishonestly. Recently our company driver was asked by one of you at the Salender Bridge intersection to turn left when the traffic lights showed red. Assuming that you had once again taken over the control of traffic lights our driver obliged but was immediately apprehended by your mate for taking a turn in red. When our driver sought innocence by taking him to you, you had disappeared. As one would expect, our driver was asked to pay some legal or illegal fines to be allowed to drive again.

Talking of insincerity, we drivers always tend to be suspicious when we see you and your mates take a ride in passenger cars. As policeman you are supposed to have a restrained stature to win our confidence. It does not behove your dignity to stop cars for lifts and even when there is an offender you wish to immediately pursue, one would expect that you would use the walkie-talkie that we often see in your hands but rarely see you use. Through walkie-talkies you should mobilise support from the few of you who go around on motorbikes in order to chase offenders who try to drive away despite being stopped. Alternatively you can instruct your mates at the next junction that an offender is on his way. Talking of restrained behaviour, only yesterday I saw one of you holding hands and laughing with an offender and when this happens we know there is a fairy tale ending because both you and the offender get what you want. 

Traffic police have an important role to play in any society. To win the confidence of drivers they are expected to maintain a strong personality like doctors maintain in front of their patients and directors maintain in front of their staff.  It is therefore important that you dress well and maintain a positive stature when performing your duty. At times we see you slouching and deeply engrossed in your own thoughts. While accepting that the cost of living in Dar es Salaam gets many stressed, it is crucial that for the safety of drivers you stay away from such thoughts when on duty.

Finally we all know that too many lives have been lost on our roads. We also know that accidents commonly occur in our city because many vehicles are not road-worthy. Rather than use road-worthiness checks as an exercise to earn some additional personal money we ask you to be sincerely involved in ensuring that unworthy vehicles are not allowed to use our roads. Unfortunately what happens now is that in exchange for a small tip you let drivers of faulty vehicles free and ironically you sometimes audaciously opt to punish those with good cars for paltry reasons simply because they are principled when it comes to handing out tips. We have also heard of road-worthiness stickers being sold unofficially.

Like a doctor who can always find some fault in his patient, we know that for negligible reasons faults can be found in a car. As a responsible man we expect you to be able to draw the line between vehicles that poise a danger and ones that do not. We expect you to take necessary action against those who poise a danger to other drivers and pedestrians and leave the law abiders to drive in peace. When we drivers realise that our traffic police are serious in maintaining law and order, we too will realise that justice cannot be bought thereby compelling us to drive road worthy cars with all pertinent documents. At present we are tempted to take things lightly because we are confident that we can get you to compromise however wrong our action has been.