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Dogs to tame rogue Nairobi motorists

October 17th, 2013 2 min read

There will be a new set of cops in town…just for matatu drivers and rogue motorists.

Traffic dogs will be introduced to man the madness on our roads, if a proposal by the newly appointed Roads and Transport Executive Evans Ondiek sees the light of day.

Aid traffic police

The proposal will see the dogs aid traffic officers assigned to major roads in the city apprehend those who break traffic rules.

Mr Ondiek said traffic snarl ups are caused more by human causes than state of the road.

“The dogs will man the roads and will be dispatched to various major roads,” said Mr Ondiek.

Although he could not state exactly when the dogs will be unleashed on the roads, the proposal shows five major roads as targets of the dog cops.

The roads are Jogoo Road, which links the city centre to Eastlands, Thika Super Highway, the gateway of the Mt Kenya region, and Ngong Road, that goes to the rich Karen suburbs and estates found in Kajiado County.

Mombasa road, which links the city to Mombasa and some estates in Southlands, will also have the animal cops.

Earlier last month, Mr Ondiek had given an elaborate plan to the County Assembly’s Committee on Appointments on how he would use the animals as a deterrent to impunity on the roads.

The dogs, which will be bought from the Kenya Police Service, will be trained to handle hanging touts and will pull in front of motorists who overlap.

“Discipline and streamlining the public transport sector will reduce the man hours lost by traffic. This will save Nairobians the time they waste navigating around man made traffic jams,” said Mr Ondieki said.

Global traffic audits which place Nairobi as  one of the countries with the worst traffic jams in Africa shows that Kenyans, most of them Nairobians, lose close to Sh 2 billion annually in avoidable snarl ups.

BILLY MUIRURI, bmuiruri@ke.nationmedia.com