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Police move to stem wave of road crashes
2007-04-24 10:10:00
By Adam Ihucha, Arusha
Police have stepped up surveillance on the busy Dar es Salaam - Arusha - Nairobi highway in a bid to curb the incidence of accidents involving passenger buses.
The move comes hardly two weeks after a commuter bus and a fuel tanker were involved in a ghastly accident at Kisangara near Mwanga in Kilimanjaro Region in which 23 died and scores were hurt.
A sizeable number of police officers from Traffic, Field Force, Criminal Investigation, and General Service units have been deployed to boost surveillance along the highway.
`We have boosted the presence of our troops along the highway so that we can more easily arrest and bring to justice reckless passenger vehicle drivers after the recent horrific smash,` Kilimanjaro Regional Police Commander Lucas Ng’hoboko said in a telephone interview with The Guardian.
Meanwhile, Acting Arusha Regional Police Commander Wenceslaus Magoha told reporters at the weekend that similarly staffed police units are stationed at strategic road locations all the way between Namanga on the Tanzania/Kenya border and the Kilimanjaro International Airport junction.
`We are maintaining a round-the-clock surveillance on the entire Arusha-Namanga highway,` Magoha said, stressing that the comprehensive patrol would leave no stone unturned in nabbing reckless drivers.
All the way from Namanga to Dar es Salaam via Arusha, Moshi and Hedaru are well equipped police barriers using speed detectors.
The police officers routinely ask passengers whether they found the driving of the vehicles they were traveling in safe and comfortable enough.
`We request passengers to alert the police by telephone whenever they come across arrogant drivers who won`t heed pleas to slow down and drive carefully,` Ng`hoboko said, adding that wananchi could alternatively notify the police officer currently patrolling the highway.
The April 15 Mwanga accident is the second deadly accident to occur in northern Tanzania in a year, following the June 2006 one in Arusha in which 54 Tanzanian citizens died after their bus plunged into a 15-metre deep gorge.
The vehicle fell off a bridge and into the gorge before being sandwiched between huge boulders on the riverbed.
The grisly accident was blamed on reckless driving and overloading, a common scenario in the country.
After the Arusha crash, police embarked on an operation similar to the current one of arresting and bringing to justice reckless passenger vehicle drivers.
However, it soon died off, resurfacing after the Mwanga accident.
Analysts say Tanzania`s road traffic rules and regulations are too lenient and full of loopholes, a situation which encourages drivers to speed while few bus owners see the need to take the vehicles for regular service.
The maximum speed allowed for passenger service vehicles in East African states is 80 kilometers per hour but many commuters buses speed as high as 140 kmh.
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