PeP STATEMENT ON GOVERNMENT’S DECISION TO RE-INTRODUCE POLICE ROAD BLOCKS
AS Patriots for E conom i c Progress (PeP), we welcome the statement issued by the Minister of Transport and Logistics Mr Frank Tayali that Government will re-introduce police road blocks in view of the many fatal road accidents in the past few days, including the Great East Road UNZA Entrance accident which claimed 12 lives, as well as the Nsumbu-Nsama Road accident which claimed the lives of 20 members of the United Church of Zambia.
We wish to put it on record that when the UPND administration made the populist policy decision to suspend police road-blocks upon ascending to office about a year ago, we strongly opposed it on the basis that police road-blocks are important for the purpose of maintaining law and order on our roads, as well as averting road traffic accidents and saving lives.
However, in their usual fashion of not listening to opposition voices, the UPND government dismissed our concerns.
It is also worth noting that the UPND administration decided to ban police road-blocks on the basis of mere speculation that traffic police officers are corrupt and that the policing of our roads should only be left in the hands of the Road Traffic and Safety Agency (RTSA). This was despite our advice that RTSA does not have enough manpower to adequately police our roads in the absence of the Zambia Police Traffic Department.
We demand that the new dawn administration in general, and the ministers of
Transport and Logistics as well as Home Affairs and Internal Security; Mr Tayali and Mr Jack Mwiimbu respectively should render an apology to Zambians for the hundreds of lives that have been unnecessarily lost on our roads in the past one year, due to their wrong policy decision to suspend police road-blocks.
Such an apology from Government is a decent thing to do and it will give citizens an assurance that the UPND administration has learnt from its policy mistakes, and that going forward they will be more considerate to the advice coming from opposition political parties such as ourselves.
We would also like to take this opportunity to advise the UPND administration that no government has ever succeeded in properly running the affairs of the nation to the exclusion of key stakeholders such as the opposition.
Running a Government successfully is supposed to be a collective undertaking by all stakeholders in the country, including the opposition.
The UPND should advise its praise singers to desist from insulting, demeaning and persecuting those of us who hold a different view on national matters. We mean well for this nation and often times, our views on national matters are better informed than those of Government.
Let us unite in our ideas for building our nation and delivering development to our people. Our people want development and not petty politicking whereby Government considers anything coming from the opposition as bad and wrong.