The Anambra State Road Traffic Management Agency, ARTMA, is a government agency tasked with the control and management of road traffic within Anambra State. Simply put, their job is to maintain sanity on the state’s roads and to ensure that every road user adheres to road traffic rules.
They are, among other duties, to ensure non-route violation, wrong parking and control of traffic. To this extent, the agency has been doing its best to achieve its mandate.
However, as is the case with most of its kind in Nigeria, some of its operatives have contrived to put a dent on the image of the agency, by actions that run contrary to the tenets of the agency.
It is a common sight to see the operatives openly leaving their duties to run after motorists, to beg for and collect money. While they are so engaged, motorists are left to their devices and during such moments of negligence of duty, accidents can occur.
Worse still, these operatives often allow those they consider as rich and powerful to violate routes, as long as they give the operatives money. At the Kwata Bridge in Awka, for example, the operatives have been observed hailing perceived rich people as they drive through the bridge rather than going further up to turn at Aroma Junction.
While hailing them, the operatives run after them until they are given tips. But while letting such people go, they waste no time in impounding the vehicles of those considered poor and either take them to their head office or extort money from them.
For instance, while the penalty for violation of routes is N5, 000, the operatives take N3, 000 from such offenders without them being taken to the head office. This, for sure, is not what is expected of the operatives.
A complaint by the editor-in-chief of this paper to the authorities was ignored, a development that may lead some people to believe that the operatives return these tips to the head office. Clearly, the activities of such operatives leave much to be desired and cast a slur on the image of the state.
When we lodged a similar complaint with the authorities of the Anambra State Capital Territory Development Authority, they took action. In this vein, therefore, we wish to appeal to the authorities of ARTMA to look into the activities of their operatives and ensure they act properly and make no distinctions regarding the people to apprehend for breaching traffic rules. Every citizen is equal before the law and government should be the last to send the wrong signals.
Source: Fidesmedia.com
