Drivers issued with express penalties forge clearance receipts

By Samuel Balagadde

The Police have uncovered forged clearance receipts presented by drivers issued with instant penalties under the Express Penalty Scheme (EPS).

The forged receipts bear stamps of banks that receive tax and none tax revenue on behalf of the Government.

Semu Mukasa, the head of the EPS tracking unit, said vehicles that mostly defraud the EPS are buses, taxis and cargo trucks.

He noted that some vehicles get overwhelmed with penalty receipts and resort to forgery.

Penalty receipts are mostly issued to vehicles in dangerous mechanical condition or given to drivers with forged driving permits or driving out of class.

Mukasa said many drivers issued with express fines do not inform their employers unless the fine is related to the mechanical condition of the vehicle.

He added that some deregistered vehicles try to beat the system by replacing their number plates with those of vehicles that have been dismantled for spare parts, making it hard to trace them.

Lawrence Niwabiine, the Kampala Extra regional traffic Police commander, said forgery of permits among drivers of public service vehicles is common. Many drivers also drive vehicles out of their license class.

Face Technologies, the company contracted to print and issue computerised driving permits, has been working on the enhancement of the integrity features of the driving permits to deter forgery.

“The exercise to enhance the integrity features of driving permits is ongoing. That is why in the last two weeks we were not able to issue the driving permit cards within our usual time-frame of 1-2 weeks,” said Nathan Tumushabe, the project coordinator.

The EPS was introduced in 2002 under the Traffic and Road Safety Act 1998.

Under the scheme, a person that commits a minor traffic offence is fined on the spot. This is aimed at decongesting courts by instantly dealing with minor traffic offences.