Rwanda National Police

In a bid to curb road accidents, public transporters have been given up to the end of this month to have installed speed governors in their vehicles.

The decision was arrived at on Monday during a meeting that was presided over by Minister of Internal Security, Sheikh Musa Fazil Harelimana and attended by the Minister of State for Transport, Alexis Nzahabwanimana, the Deputy Inspector General of Police in Charge of Operations (DIGP) Dan Munyuza and representatives of utility regulatory body, RURA Rwanda Standards Bureau as well as representatives from public transport companies.

Minister Harerimana emphasized the need for concrete actions to stop fatal accidents that claim lives of people and destroy property.

 “We have established an ad hoc committee that will, in two days, come up with a roadmap of how we are going to ensure that speed governors are installed in all public transport vehicles in the agreed upon time frame, without affecting their businesses,” Minister Harelimana.

The decision is also part of enforcing the February 2015 Presidential Order relating to installation of speed governors into public service vehicles  and other commercial vehicles.

In his remarks, Minister Nzahabwanimana told public transporters that “We have for long embarked on sensitization and it’s now time to implement some of these decisions."

"If we had fixed the speed governors in February we could have saved some lives; that’s why we need to enforce it now without delay. Also we are going to embark on banning driver that have a bad track record of accidents and withdraw their driving licenses” Nzahabwanimana said.

“We are aware RURA is in the process of acquiring a software that would monitor disciplinary records of drivers of Public Services and Commercial vehicles and we want this process expedited”  Minister Nzahabwanimana said.

In rephrasing the need for discipline among drivers, DIGP Munyuza said that Police is going to be stricter on drunk driving and over speeding.

“Owners of public buses should come up with a way of banning alcohol among their drivers. Our Traffic and Road Safety Department is ready to assess and measure physical and mental fitness of drivers” said DIGP Munyuza.

With regards to speed governor, DIG Munyuza proposed that the fitting should start with vehicles that transport passengers especially in long distances.

Representatives of public transport companied welcomed the new proposals saying that they also have a lot to benefit by reducing road accident occurrence.

One of their representative, Issah Ngeze, said, “We acquire these buses on loans by all means we also need to ensure that they are safe. No one wants his company to have a reputation of accidents that’s why we will ensure these decisions are enforced.”

Among other decisions taken is to ensure that buses commuting long distance must have more than one driver to avoid fatigue which has been among causes of such accidents.

It was also decided that by end of 2015, all public transport drivers shall have job contracts in accordance with labour laws as means to ensure they have job security and are more responsible.