Protests broke out outside the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) headquarters on Thursday morning, calling for an end to the increasing road carnage.
Led by the Road Safety Association of Kenya, the protesters alleged that there was deep corruption in the authority and the transport sector in general, causing the accidents.
Therefore, they delivered a petition seeking the immediate removal of the NTSA Director General, George Njao, as he had allegedly been facilitating corruption.
They alleged that 1.2 million vehicles had not been inspected in 2024 and had thus provided Ksh7.2 billion in bribes. The association's chairperson, David Njoroge Kierie, demanded that the DG be kicked out immediately.
"It is the Kenyan people who pay for this office, and they are also the ones who pay their salaries, and so if they are unable to do the work, the DG should step down and go," he said.
"We will give our petition and follow the law as is expected. The law is very clear that if someone is unable to undertake their role anymore, they should go."
He further cited that 60,000 people had died in the past six years, claiming that the carnage had been caused by the deep-rooted corruption in the industry.
As such, he revealed that the association was seeking the NTSA Board of Governors to advertise for a new DG and have one in an acting capacity by next week.
Among other faults they raised was that the authority had failed to assume full operational control of the Transport Integrated Management System (TIMS), two years after it went live in March 2023.
They also faulted NTSA for lacking access to generate reports necessary for tracking revenue and performance.
Additionally, they alleged that over four million smart driving licences had been delivered, but most remained unused without a clear explanation of why.
No formal contract was signed for the adoption of the system, thereby weakening the NTSA's legal and technical oversight of its operations, according to the association.
Lastly, they faulted the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission for failing to take action on any of these claims, saying, "All the auditor general's reports have been on the EACC desk for over two years."
