Human rights crusader Okiya Omtatah has moved to court seeking to suspend the Traffic (Driving Schools and Instructor) Rules 2014 (2017) saying that there was no public participation.
Omtatah further wants the court to suspend decision by National Transport and Safety Authority to disable the E citizen passwords of driving schools and of officers of the Driving Test Unit of the National Police Service, which Administrative action effectively shut down operations of most drivingSchools around the country.
Omtata claims that the provisions of the draft statutory instruments (The Traffic (Driving Schools and Instructors) Rules 2014 (2017)), are unreasonable and against the public interest, and cannot be implemented by most schools.
“The requirement the each and every driving school should own not less than 1.7 acres of land upon which it must develop facilities and infrastructure of a model highway is unreasonable, “reads the petition.
Further Omtatah says that the requirement the each and every driving school should own classrooms measuring 8m by 6m, and equipped with ICT teaching aids such as computers and projectors and the requirement the each and every driving school should have a management structure containing such human resources as a school manager, a secretary, instructors, and a director of studies who are at least diploma holders cannot be implemented.
According to the petition papers filed at the Milimani Law courts, Omtatah says that on 29th December 2017, in an apparent knee-jack reaction to the deaths of the three bishops and in its habitual manner of looking for Scapegoats to blame and victimize whenever grisly traffic accidents occur on Kenyan roads, NTSA had arbitrarily and without notice shut down Operations in all driving schools around the country when it arbitrarily and without notice disabled on the NTSA portal the E-citizen passwords of the driving schools’ and also the passwords of Police examiners.
He claims that NTSA reconfigured its online portal by removing the old curriculum and uploading the impugned new one, and demanded that driving schools must first comply with the new curriculum before they would be issued with new passwords.
“That the affected driving schools are faced with imminent bankruptcy and collapse if their operations are not restored immediately by reinstating their Ecitizen passwords and the passwords of the officers of the Driving Test Unit of the Police,”argues Omtatah.
