Police action angers garage owners

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 11:07:42 +0000

By MARY KACHEPA

GARAGE owners on Mukwa Road in Lusaka’s heavy industrial area have complained that traffic police officers are reportedly ruining their business by invading their work places looking for faulty cars parked for repairs.

But police spokesperson Esther Katongo defended the police action and said that as long as the officers found a vehicle that was not roadworthy they were within the law to impound it to protect the public before it went on the road.

“It is not that we have stopped with traffic law operations, even at a bus station when the traffic police officers find a vehicle that is not roadworthy they can impound it.

“After the minister said that we should not inconvenience the travelling public by mounting roadblocks, we decided to find other ways of insuring that the vehicles on the roads are in good condition,” she said.

But  one of the affected garage owners Kennedy Ngoma said that he was losing out on business because his customers were now scared of taking their cars to the garage for maintenance or repairs.

“I wonder if their commissioner told them to start following people in their premises to check for defective vehicles after they stopped them from mounting road blocks,” he said

Mr Ngoma complained that if a vehicle had no road tax and was packed at a garage, the police had no right to put the owners to task.

“It would even be better for the police to start mounting road blocks again instead of them coming to our premises to check for defects on parked vehicles waiting to be repaired,” said Mr Ngoma.