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When the Millennium was preparing to roll around, I
was impressed by the amount of security forces and
traffic police out on patrol making sure that the
capital was in tip-top shape for all the people that
decided to stop in and visit us for our special
holiday. I argued at the time that we, the locals,
who would still be here after the dust settled on
the biggest party ever thrown, were always entitled
to that sort of attention and access the public
services, whether or not there would be dignitaries
and Diaspora coming in.
More for the purpose of flattering myself than
anything else, I see that at least one public
institution has taken this advice to heart, although
the manner in which they are doing it is both
commendable and questionable all at the same time. I
am speaking of the Addis Abeba Traffic Police, which
has spread its tentacles and positioned itself in
such a way that it would be remiss of us to forget
that it was ever a public services nightmare.
The Traffic Police force seems to have increased its
numbers at the same rate that rabbits reproduce.
There are so many traffic cops in town today at any
given time that it makes you wonder where they were
hidden all this time. There are police assigned to
places that never used to be considered important
enough to warrant the presence of traffic laws. It
is not only their numbers that have increased, but
also their diligence in making sure that drivers are
paying attention to even the smallest traffic laws,
which would otherwise have been disregarded.
Being the vain human machine that I am, I thought
this column had finally reached the stage where it
was influencing the right people in order to make
visible changes to badly implemented policy. Come to
find out, it had nothing to do with this little
column, but rather with the fact that the
institution had implemented a new commission rate on
the tickets that the members of the force are
handing out. When I got over my initial disgust and
humiliation that I had nothing to do with it, it
occurred to me that this latest move by the
administration of the Addis Abeba Traffic Police is
both a blessing and a curse in disguise.
To start with, the silver lining in the cloud,
increasing the amount of legitimate money that a
traffic cop is able to make on the job, only goes
towards making that person more honest and more
likely to do better at their duties in order to get
that extra cash. What this translates to is that
more traffic violators will be punished, and our
streets will be safer. This also means that the
members of the force will take less bribes because
they would now be able to make roughly the same
amount of money by simply doing their jobs
correctly.
It would be negligent on my part not to mention what
was perhaps the most crippling failure of the
traffic policy: the fact that just about any member
of that force was open to bribery.
Now that this problem has been addressed by
increasing the amount of money that is being earned
on the job, what is there to keep the members of the
traffic force from simply handing out tickets left
and right just to get that extra cash in their
pockets?
There is no system in place that would be able to
protect the recipient of the public service if they
feel that they have wrongfully been charged with a
traffic violation.
You can only contest a traffic ticket after you have
paid it. But after having to deal with the insane
lines at Megenagna and then going to the district
office to get your drivers license, who wants to
enter a civil case that could possibly take years
just to contest a traffic ticket which you already
paid for?
While I am pleased that the number of traffic police
on our streets has increased, and that as a result,
rush hour and the more congested areas of the city
have gone from maddening to merely upsetting, I am
nervous that the latest system which has been put in
place could be abused because there is no
independent system in place that would be able to
regulate the validity of the tickets that are being
handed out like bread. I hope for all our sakes that
the members of the traffic police are honest,
because if they were the type to take bribes, then
heaven knows what would happen when they have free
reign and the inducement to earn more money when it
comes to handing out tickets.
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