Judge Ian, while at a recent recording of Churchill show, said my opinion is mine and everyone is entitled to theirs. This is mine. If you agree with it then we are 2 peas in the same pod, if not, get your own pod ....in peace.
I don't know what to make of the NTSA since all that is there is confusion galore. Let me start with its title NATIONAL TRANSPORT SAFETY AUTHORITY. Let me break it down;
According to the online Oxford Dictionary this is what i have come to understand;
National...as an adjective means;
Transport....as a verb
Safety
In a nutshell, i was hoping that finally there is a voice of reason in the mess and menace of the transport in this country including rail, air, water and the so obvious road transport.This is a much needed relief looking at what is at hand. The nation through the government declared a vision 2030 that only the elite understand. Check with my peeps back in the village, very few of them understand it or are even aware of it.
I don't know what to make of the NTSA since all that is there is confusion galore. Let me start with its title NATIONAL TRANSPORT SAFETY AUTHORITY. Let me break it down;
According to the online Oxford Dictionary this is what i have come to understand;
National...as an adjective means;
- Relating to or characteristic of a nation; common to a whole nation: For instance this policy may have been in the national interest a national newspaper
- Owned, controlled, or financially supported by the state: For instance plans for a national art library
Transport....as a verb
- Take or carry (people or goods) from one place to another by means of a vehicle, aircraft, or ship:For instance the bulk of freight traffic was transported by lorry
- A system or means of conveying people or goods from place to place: For instance many possess their own forms of transport air transport (NOUN)
Safety
- The condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury: For instance they should leave for their own safety the survivors were airlifted to safety (NOUN)
- The power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience:For instance he had absolute authority over his subordinates a rebellion against those in authority (NOUN)
- A person with extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject; an expert: For instance he was an authority on the stock market (NOUN)
In a nutshell, i was hoping that finally there is a voice of reason in the mess and menace of the transport in this country including rail, air, water and the so obvious road transport.This is a much needed relief looking at what is at hand. The nation through the government declared a vision 2030 that only the elite understand. Check with my peeps back in the village, very few of them understand it or are even aware of it.
I went a step further to check their website and realized that they only focused on road transport. Okay. Then change the name of the organization to National Road Safety Authority. It is further embarrassing that National Transport and Safety Authority Act (No 33 of 2012) still bears the same general name and only focuses on road transport. I thought we use experts to formulate our bills...the grammatical error would have been easily picked up. Can this bill be renamed to reflect reality? Secondly, i think more engagement is required by those in charge of civic education on bills to make it more accessible to the persons affected as well as watu wa mashinani (people at the 'grassroot' level) simply because if i ask a tout if he is aware of this law, i will get a blank stare in return.
Now back to Road safety.
I am a mother and ,by God's grace, know how to drive. The challenge i face on the road especially over the weekend is that when i have to move with the kids, it is obvious that they need their specially designed car seats for their own safety. There are several seats being sold in the market and a good number of my friends have bought for their own kids. I have had 2 seats so far. The first one was given me by a colleague whose son had outgrown it and the second one i bought but the intended owner did not bond with it well so we dismembered it and use the bottom part as a booster seat once in a while. Truth be told, it is more of a toy nowadays. Before i get to where i am heading, I will mention that with the first car seat, I noted that at the bottom there were various instructions on SAFETY , storage, usage and an expiry date.This meant that after a certain period, standards will be reviewed and it may no longer be safe to use that car seat. We live in a nation that we are outdoing each other on flashiness yet do not understand the history behind the flashy stuff we keep buying locally and internationally. God bless us all for some lives have been saved with these unregulated car seats but still....NTSA this should be your docket.
MY POINT, why is the NTSA focusing on stuff that is already common knowledge that more often we choose to ignore? Don't gawk at me. It is the truth.Typical scenario at the Uhuru Highway roundabout is that a driver going straight through the highway will drive in the innermost lane and expect a miracle drive through however the opposite happens. S/he gets stuck in a rut and instead of going the full way of the roundabout so as to rectify the mistake, the driver REVERSES ON A ROUNDABOUT and then gets onto the correct lane and moves on swiftly. When you live in this beautiful country, you discover that we have the best systems on paper but cannot implement them or do so frantically that the foundation is missed hence due to the collapse of the very system meant to help its citizens then we have ended up as an impatient lot because we now believe that nothing really works.
Between looking at the car seats, models, safety requirements and all that comes along with it versus looking at speed limits, DL renewals etc, it is more appropriate for the NTSA (now NRSA henceforth in this article) to look into such. Truth be told is that in most accidents it is the younger ones who have the highest fatalities which could have been avoided by simply ensuring that at the point of hospital discharge, the child is picked up in a car that has an infant car seat fitted in it. Whether hired, borrowed, stolen or bought I don't care. Let us do the right thing for once in this nation. Further on, ensure that regular reviews are done on what models should be in use within a certain period of time. I choose to leave that assignment to you NRSA. If you ever do this, please also regulate the prices. There are people i know those who cannot buy stuff locally because these unregulated stuff are grossly overcharged due to the general public's lack of information.
Source: www.overstock.com
Still looking at road safety, a bigger majority of this nation still uses public transport from bodaboda, tuktuk, motorbikes (aka kifikifi), to taxis and matatus with of course the exceptional few who can afford car hire. Most notorious for causing accidents are bodaboda, tuktuk and motorbikes and for traffic jams are the matatus. My concern is that a majority of the stakeholders do not know how to handle accident scenes. For instance, whenever a matatu collides even with a private vehicle. More often than not, first aid will be given by the occupants of the private vehicle rather than those whom we entrust our lives daily while on commute. NRSA kindly ensure that everyone engage in public transport is a certified first aider simply because we cannot wait for the police, fire brigade, St. John's or Red Cross to arrive....the first aid responders may be a second too late and then you will go ahead and include the fatalities in your monthly reports whereas it could have quite easily avoided in the first place.
Next, still on the roads since that what you choose to specialize on, the road network is a mess. Let us look at the mega superhighway veiled as Thika road. It is more risky for a pedestrian, cyclist and cart-pusher to use this road. I don't want to delve further into how the other roads are fairing. It is more of a death wish to walk on Kenyan roads. One would rather get onto a matatu to move 1km than take the healthier option.
All that i have mentioned above so far covers my opinion of Section 4(1) of the National Transport Safety Authority Act of 2012.
Section 4(2) talks of ;
I don't want to say much except;
- Licensing of motor vehicles should be left with KRA. Period. Reason being they were much more efficient compared to what was experienced in the months of August, September and October. From your title, you are experts giving guidance and not doing the actual donkey work.
- What do you mean by regulate public service vehicles? Why? First, it is an industry by itself. Don't meddle with it if you don't have an expert to guide you. By expert, i mean take a retired matatu driver or a former kingpin (hence considered elder in the African context) and use their knowledge to regulate that kind of business and the same applies to taxis.
- If by introducing the 50kph speed limit is what relates to coordinating the activities of persons and organizations dealing with matters relating to road safety, then we are doomed. Coordination does not mean overtaking what the traffic department of the Kenya Police Service is doing. Coordination means bringing together all the different elements of a complex activity into a harmonious relationship (source: Oxford)
- I took my driving exam in 2008 and we were still using the syllabus i used my elder siblings used in the 90s. Please be sure that you are going to deliver on your objectives otherwise i would say matatu drivers are better equipped at teaching/training defensive driving.As you put up that driving syllabus that the traffic department ought to be preparing, remember to have a chat with the likes of Glenn Edmunds School of Defensive Driving and acknowledge them appropriately as this is part of coordination.
Moving forward, looking at your members of the board, i see an over-used joke of political appointment. They are already serving in government...meaning they already have a full time job, if not jobs at the very least. 40% of Kenya's population is unemployed. Unemployment here is referring to those who cannot even afford to sell veggies by the roadside in the evening coz if we include this lot then it is an embarrassingly high rate considering Kenya was re-based recently.
We are 44 million roughly in this nation yet there are only 22 official vendors on the NRSA website. Assume logically that 40% of the population each own 1 car, we have 17.6M cars that NRSA needs to deal with. Then it is assumable that these cars are in the urban areas with Msa, & Nairobi having the bulk number of these cars. It would mean that we need an equal number of PSVs to service the nation since NRSA was set up to ignore rail, air and water transport...so another 17.6M PSVs. There is only one challenge though.....their website has only 22 registered speed governor vendors. My bet would be they are all in Nairobi and it is no surprise that there are 20 members in the Senior Management and the Board combined.This means that if what I'm thinking is what your thinking then over and above that thought, each vendor is meant to deal with roughly 800k PSVs annually. Further assuming that for each fitting a vendor charges Kes. 20,000 then I am in the wrong career line. I would like to be considered to be a vendor of NRSA approved speed governors.
On a more serious note, inspection of PSVs should be done by Govt inspection centres as well as outsourced to petrol stations and already established firms like CMC, Toyota, GM etc then we avoid the drama we experienced recently.How do we hold them accountable? Simple. Any PSV involved in an accident has to provide proof of inspection. Where the certificate is in doubt then hold the outsourced inspectors accountable for the accident, till when they prove themselves otherwise. Why are we so busy re-inventing the wheel when our peers are busy in the grind inventing stuff that we only and always dream of. There are bigger things that NRSA can be doing like road user engagement and education e.g. have 3 minute programs on national media reminding us of road basics so that it aids the Kenya Police Service Traffic Department do their work better. Have simple DO's and DONT's in such a manner that even unlicensed drivers that are already on the road can learn from.
Unfortunately, your website is not comprehensive so i will give an equal response to the DL issue. Please issue new generation licenses that are presentable internationally. Here is a hint below;
Source: http://www.somaliaonline.com/community/topic/come-and-get-your-puntland-driver-license-waa-guul-soo-hoyatay-pics/
The more i write this, the more apparent it is that i am unable to justify your existence.
Maybe you need to expand your scope to cover transport in totality and not just roads because Kenyans , specifically first time flyers, need to understand that air-tickets do not have a standard price. Education is needed that booking is done at least 21 days in advance for the best/cheapest rates failure to which is the public outcry that we see right now against JamboJet yet terms and conditions are always written in fine print. First time flyers need to be taught that if a flight is at 6.30pm, please check in by 5.30pm for local flights and 3 hours earlier for international flights to be safe even if you have done online check in. Stuff happens.
I believe water and rail transport are the most neglected because the only time that people using the rail is when Mombasa road has a serious clog and water transport is literally unutilsed by the general public.Maybe .....as a booster to local tourism...there needs to be introduced short commercialized journeys between towns bordering large water bodies e..g have trips between Kendu Bay and Homa Bay or similar stuff for Lake Turkana and even for the Indian Ocean. With this, NRSA that shall be then be fully baptized back to NTSA, shall lay down guidelines on water transport and keep on reviewing them in the name of safety.
I will finish with this. I reiterate with this, my opinion is mine as Judge Ian clearly put it here on the Churchill show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reWzOLJVqMc&list=PLo3O2YnpJ9mMdyPXWv2hzqldie87QFn_e
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