By Francis H. Murray
The Center for Accountability and the Rule of Law (CARL) and AdvocAid, two rights based civil society organizations that promote equal access to justice and institutional transparency, have called for reforms in the laws governing traffic management in the country.
The rights groups say that most petty offenses in the country, including minor traffic offenses, non-payments of debts and loitering, which are not clearly specified in the law, are disproportionate to the punishment levied on perpetrators. And this, they argue, amounts to human rights violations.
Representatives of the groups made these points at a joint stakeholders meeting bringing together the police, the law reforms commission and the Sierra Leone Correctional Services last Thursday, geared towards mapping out recommendations to a longstanding issue of alleged police maltreatment of commercial bike riders.
Project Coordinator at CARL, Ansumana Fabundeh, said the meeting held at their office was part of an ongoing engagement geared towards decriminalizing minor offenses committed by commercial bike riders and motor drivers and to recommend alternative penalties, such as community services.
Fabundeh said the engagement is part of a project designed to decriminalize poverty. He cited the outcome of a joint research conducted by the two organizations in 2017 which revealed that 33% of cases in court were mostly petty offences related, noting that such cases had human rights implications, with a huge impact on the effective functioning of the judiciary.
The activist referenced the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, which urges member states to consider using punishment such as warning and community service in dealing with minor offenses. He said the current situation in Sierra Leone, where every case tend to attract custodial sentence, has led to overcrowding at the correctional centers and contributing to poverty and a misguided use of state resources.
Legal Manager for AdvocAid, Lydia Winyi Kembabazi, lauded the idea behind the meeting, which she said was testing the policies and laws locally and internationally to ensure that they were not only appropriate but also that they meet the benchmarks for international best practices and fit for the purposes for which they have been created.
Idrissa Kargbo, an official from the Law Reforms Commission, noted that the right to acquire property is a fundamental human right of every citizen, for which a civil as well as criminal action could be brought against anyone who is deemed to be in violation of same, including the police.
He added that the State Procedures Act gives the right to anyone to sue state institutions, noting that he is yet to come across any legal instrument that gives the police the right to seize the property of people.
Kargbo further noted that the reforms sought by the ongoing engagement should be consistent with the laws of the country as they relate to international best practices, in a bid to foster fair play among affected parties.
Public Relations Officer of Bike Riders Union (BRU), Mahamed Nabiew, remarked that riders were important to the socio-economic development of the country, but he expressed dissatisfaction with the way the police have been handling their members. He lamented that even though they pay tax to the central government, with the profession having provided employment for over 8,000 youths across the country, the police still consider them as ‘‘sworn enemies.’’
Head of Traffic Investigations, Sierra Leone Police (SLP), Assistant Superintendent Daniel Alfred Luseni Bockarie, also noted that they’re custodians of the law and only work under instructions, adding that motorbikes are impounded for the purposes of safe custody as most of them are not licensed, which makes it difficult to trace their original owners.
In a similar meeting held in July, the union representing commercial motorbike riders, known as Okada, accused traffic police officers of illegally converting bikes they impound into personal property.
They also accused the police of illegally taking ownership of the bikes when they arrest their owners for minor traffic offenses, detain them, and only to release them later after their bikes would have been done away with in fraudulent action processes.
At the end of this latest meeting on Thursday, it was agreed that the police should come up with a statement warning their personnel on the ground to stop confiscating motorbikes and the licenses of riders forthwith, as it was out of their purview. The police were also requested to collaborate with SLRSA and revisit and identify the Central Business District area where most riders get harassed.
CARL was asked to share the findings of the research it conducted in 2017 on the administration of cases to all relevant stakeholders and to set up a committee consisting of the police, the Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority and the BRU to facilitate coordination of their operations.
The BRU was also urged to develop a database of riders for easy identification and to ensure that such registered members are duly licensed to operate as riders.
The union also called for the fast-tracking of the licensing processes and for the police to disclose the whereabouts of impounded motorbikes.
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