PSV operators in Nakuru town now want the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to set up a permanent office in Nakuru town to deal with the ‘corrupt’ traffic police officers.
Speaking to this writer on Tuesday in Nakuru town, the drivers and conductors said that lack of the EACC offices in Nakuru was giving the traffic police a free space to operate.
They accused traffic police officers along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway and the Nakuru-Nyahururu highway of turning matatus into their milking cows by extorting money from drivers.
They said that it will be easier to deal with the corruption on the two busy roads, only if there are EACC officials in Nakuru.
Central Rift Matatu Sacco Chairman Stephen Muli said that EACC must devolve its operations if it wants to deal with corruption decisively
“EACC must have an office in Nakuru because this is such a big and busy town with a lot of things happening in it and the issue of corruption especially among traffic police can be sorted out if we can have EACC detectives around,” said Muli.
“We have written to them so many times but they seem not to be giving us a response. They must act quickly because the traffic police in Nakuru will force some of us to drop out of business,” added Muli.
James Ngure, the chairman of the Bahama sacco said that the amount of money collected as bribes by police officers in Nakuru amounts to millions of shilling every month, and EACC should do something to save the matatu industry from exploitation by police officers.
“For every trip you make, you must give out Sh100, something which happens to every matatu and this is a lot of money being collected by police officers considering the number of matatus we have on these routes,” said Ngure.