By Tong Akok Anei Mawien
Despite the fact that we slam our traffic police officers sometimes on how they handle their duties, it is not good sometimes how we treat them during the course of doing their duties. Our traffic police officers are facing a lot of challenges in our hands; they are facing a lot of challenges in the hands of big fish; they are facing a lot of challenges in the hands of senior officers from different units; a lot of disturbance and disrespect to them when doing their duties.
Every day as I board public transport, there is a lot of stubbornness and disrespect towards our national traffic officers. Many of them swallow their pride and continue doing their work, but deep down, it hurts them.
These officers are doing a national duty; they are managing our daily movement so that we attend to our duties safely and on time. Mostly in the street, where there is no presence of a traffic police officer, the rate of accidents and jams increases due to the behavior of many South Sudanese road users.
Yesterday as I was moving on public transport, our bus was filled with more than the seat allocated per trip and hence the extra human was to stand with the conductor and as a result, the door could not close and we have to move by bus door open which is not acceptable in traffics rules but not just a matter of traffic rules but the risk it poses to the people standing, so as we move, a traffic police officer as he was moving at the roadside monitoring told the conductor to close, just in plain and simple instructions but with conductor stubbornness and disrespectful responds because he knows in his mind the person he is leaning to, he argued on how he would close when they are two standing.
The police officer instructed the driver to pull aside and as the driver was pulling aside we all turn to blame the conductor for his ignorant and disrespectful but ignorantly as well, he overlooked us and pull out his phone and dial to his big fish, on the phone in Juba Arabic “he informed the other side that they were stop for nothing just the openness of the bus door and the fool in the other side instructed him to give the phone to the police officer” as the communication ensued, I believe the officer was talking to someone who might be above his ranks. We also learned that the same bus was arrested for a different offense the following day, so we were released to precede with our journey.
Therefore, the interventions of big fish allow the bending of the traffic rules; let us give a chance to our officers to carry out their duties freely and independently; any accountability has to be followed up in his or her chain of command; let our big fish or their properties be liable to law and order too; we are all equal before law and order.
The Author is an Applied Statistics Master’s Student, the University of Juba,; He can be reached via Email: tongakok7170@gmail.com/tongakok47@gmail.com: Tel: 0929300008/0988011119