For a long time road traffic accidents have been the leading cause of permanent disability and mortality among those aged 10 to 50 years. In many developing countries, not only is the incidence of various injuries increasing with road traffic accidents, which appear to be the leading cause of traumatic injuries.
The recent accident that involved two City Boy Company buses which collided head-on along Maweni-Kintinku Road in Manyoni District, Singida Region, is a shocking one. In that accident, about 30 people perished and dozens others wounded.
This has prompted one arm of the state, that is, the Executive, to come up with strict Rules and Regulations in attempt to contain the problem. The Minister for Works, Transport and Communications, Prof. Makame Mbarawa, is quoted as directing the Surface and Marine Transport Regulatory Authority (Sumatra) to come up with tougher regulations that will help curb road accidents.
“It is obvious that the existing regulations are not tough enough to send a serious message to reckless drivers and bus owners. It is high time we came up with something more serious to deal with this problem,” the minister is further quoted as pointing out.
Indeed, Sumatra through its Director General, Mr Gilliard Ngewe, has expressed its firm commitment in response to the Minister’s directive and has already formed a team to draft the new regulations that will enable the authority to mete out appropriate punishment within a specified period of time.
According to Mr Ngewe, the new regulations that would be forwarded to the Attorney General for other legal procedures aim at punishing reckless drivers and irresponsible transport firms, with the purpose of saving lives and ensuring that traffic rules are strictly observed. Much as the government’s concern needed support from all stakeholders, the Parliament, on the other hand, should also play its part on the matter.
The introduction of the new regulations regulating road accidents should go hand in hand with the amendments of the parent law, that is, the Transport and Licensing Act, Cap 317.
Sumatra’s decision to forward the new regulations to the Attorney General should not only be for legal opinion, but also act as a catalyst to cause new amendments of the Transport and Licensing Act to reflect the new changes and the required purpose.
Otherwise, the introduction of new regulations alone without amendments of the Act of Parliament will not cure the problem, as what happened in a High Court case on appeal involving Nayaz Hassan Kan, the owner of buses christened Supper Najumnisa Bus Services against Sumatra.
In the case in question, the controversy involved Transport Licensing (Road Passenger Vehicles Regulations), 2007, which were approved by the minister responsible with the sector under powers conferred upon him by the law, then Infrastructure Minister Andrew Chenge. Section 4 (3) of the Regulations requires bus owners to pay 250,000/- as fine for violation of licence conditions. However, the Transport and Licensing Act provided a fine of 10,000/- for such an offence.
An attempt was made to apply the 2007 Regulations to the owner of Supper Najumnisa Bus Services to impose the fine of 250,000/-. This is what happened in that case; on January 5, last year, Sumatra penalized Super Najumnisa Bus Services owner at Nyegezi Bus Stand in Mwanza City to pay such fine on allegations that his bus went against the licence regulations.
The basis of imposing such fine was due to Transport Licensing (Road Passenger Vehicles Regulations) made on September 29, 2007. On February 3, last year, the bus owner took the matter on appeal before the High Court to challenge the decision of Sumatra.
He had alleged that such fine that was imposed on him as per section 4 (3) of the Transport Licensing (Road Passenger Vehicles Regulations), 2007, was against the parent law enacted by the Parliament, the Transport Licensing Act, Cap 317. Such parent law, under section 35 provided the maximum fine to the proved offender as 10,000/- for the first offender.
The appellant, therefore, asked the court to declare that the proper fine to be imposed is 10,000/- and any other penalty like 250,000/- as proposed by Sumatra was illegal. In its judgment delivered in October 2015, the High Court agreed with the bus owner and nullified the decision by Sumatra, holding that any fine more than 10,000/-, which is provided for under the Transport and Licensing Act to the offender was illegal.
The judge ruled that the proper fine which is to be imposed to law violators was 10,000/-, especially to the first offender as provided for by an Act of the Parliament and directed Sumatra to refund the appellant the balance of 240,000/- that had been in excess imposed on him by the regulatory body.
Had the Transport and Licensing Act been amended to reflect the purposes intended for under the Transport Licensing (Road Passenger Vehicles Regulations), the court decision on the matter would have been different.
Statistics by the Traffic Division of the Tanzania Police Force show that there were 3,969 deaths from road accidents countrywide in 2012; 4,002 in 2013 and 3,760 in 2014, while the total number of road accidents in 2012 was 23,578, 23,842 in 2013 and 14,360 accidents, in 2014.
These grim statistics have prompted experts in the transportation sector to advise Tanzanians to take motor vehicle driving in general – and ‘commercial’ driving in particular – as a serious matter rather than a mere occupation for otherwise unemployed people.
Sumatra plans to conduct another study on the state of road accidents in the country, as it admitted it was facing an uphill task in tackling the ever increasing tragic road accidents.
According to Sumatra’s Public Affairs Manager David Mziray, the new study will strictly evaluate the development in the transport sector and factors contributing to road accidents with recommendations on how to avoid them once and for all.
However, he admits that the outcome of the new study might bring few changes from the first study which was conducted by the Bureau for Industrial Cooperation (BICO) of the University of Dar es Salaam in 2007.
