Amos Lugoloobi, Minister of State for Planning
Government through the Ministry of Finance has proposed to amend the Traffic and Road Safety Act, to increase fines of motorists found liable of over speeding from the current Shs200,000 to Shs2M.
The details are contained in the seven tax bills that were recently tabled before Parliament by Amos Lugoloobi, Minister of State for Planning, in which he proposed to amend the Traffic and Road Safety Act, Cap. 361 to replace reference to “badge” in the Act with “professional driving permit as well as to provide for a speed limit in the Act to ease the control of the speed limit through the express penalty scheme as opposed to court prosecution as provided for under the Roads Act, 2019; and to repeal section 52 of the Roads Act, 2019.
Government has proposed an insertion of a new clause on the sped limit in section 119A in principal Act to give the powers to the Minister of Works and Transport to make regulations, prescribe speed limits in respect of all public roads or sections of public roads.
Further, the proposal also gives the Transport Minister to make the provisions of any other law, the Minister may, by statutory order, prescribe temporary maximum speed limits for motor vehicles, trailers or engineering plant of different classes or descriptions on any part of any road for such period as may be specified in the order.
Failure to to comply with the regulations, Government has proposed, “A person who fails to comply with a speed limit set under subsection (1) commits an offence and is liable, on conviction, to a fine not exceeding one hundred currency points or imprisonment not exceeding three years, or both,” read in part the provision.
One currency points is equivalent to Shs20, 000 thus bringing the fine to Shs2M.
The proposed amendment comes at the height of increased concern on road carnage in Uganda with the December 2022 Annual Crime report by Uganda Police pointing to a 17%increase in the number of crashes reported in 2022 from 17,443 crashes in 2021 to 20,394 crashes in 2022.
According to Police, there were 20,394 crashes reported out of which 3,901were fatal, 10,776 were serious and 5,717 were minor.
The report further highlighted that the number of fatal crashes increased by 16.9% from 3,757in 2021 to 3,901 in 2022, while the same increment was recorded in the number of serious crashes that increased from 9,070 in 2021 to 10,776 in 2022. The number of minor crashes increased from 4,616in 2021 to 5,717in 2022.
However, Police recorded 6130 cases for driving in excess of prescribed speed out of the 336,722 traffic offences and the Police revealed that in 2022, there were 456,993 tickets issued valued at Shs38.585Bn.
The proposed amendment to the Traffic and Road Safety Act is part of the compendium of tax measures that have been proposed by the Ministry of Finance to further supplement other tax laws that are being implemented by Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) in order to raise Shs28.831Trn to be collected by the Authority to financed the 2023/2024 national budget.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the Shs28.831Trn will translate into an increase of revenues to a tune of Shs2.580 Trillion up from Shs25.550Trn the Authority is projected to collect in FY 2022/2023
The tax bills were referred to the Parliament’s Committee on Finance before Parliament makes the final decision on the proposal.
