When the Police catch a traffic offender, they issue them with a ticket provided for under the express penalty scheme. On occasion, the offender has to give up their driving permit until they clear fines. Kampala traffic Commander Norman Musinga has revealed that the majority of lawbreakers do not return for their permits opting to report them as lost or missing so that they can get a replacement. “These are just offenders who commit traffic offenses. After committing traffic offenses they abandon their permits at the Police stations expecting to come back and pick them. These people are issued with tickets, they don’t pay, they are defaulters, they refused to come back to the Police and pick their permits.” Said, Norman Musinga – Kampala Traffic Police Commander.

Musinga says Police is still holding more than 2,000 driving permits; the majority of the owners are taxi drivers. “Most of these people, what they normally do after Police has got their permits, they go and reapply; they begin afresh to get new permits you can imagine, which is very bad. And they decide to abandon these permits at the Police station.” He said some flee arrests because they do not want to pay the fines. “We are embarking seriously to ensure that there is an effective measure, standard measures to ensure that culprits are got and they are penalized accordingly.” Now, these fines have accumulated to over 52 billion shillings. “There is a lot of money in circulation almost 52 billion; money not yet paid. This comes in as a result as to why you are seeing these permits are abandoned at the Police stations.”

The Principal Inspector of Vehicles in the Ministry of Works and Transport Karim Kibuuka said it's not easy for Face Technologies the company contracted to provide driving permits to detect the traffic offenders. “The system cannot detect that actually, this person is applying for a duplicate driving permit when actually he did not lose the document. Because some people just abandon their driving permits with the Police and then come to us to request for new or duplicate driving permits. So the system cannot detect for someone who is lying that they lost the document.”

They are however optimist that under the new law where traffic offenders will be required to pay their fines within an hour, will have fewer cases of permits being abandoned. “What we are going to do, we are going to liaise with Police because before we have been getting Police letters and also Police has been giving out these without carrying out due diligence within themselves where they have driving permits which people are claiming they are lost. Because sometimes, most of the cases we have; you Police is widespread they have so many stations. So sometimes it’s not very easy to trace where a particular driving permit is.” Musinga says, they will soon embark on a search for abandoned permit owners.