MASTER FILE 
Date of interview	29th March 2018	
Interviewer	 	
Department	Ministry of lands	
Position of respondent		
Name of Respondent 		
Duration of interview	47 minutes	
Transcribed by		
Setting and notes	Interview happened at The ministry of lands at 3pm. Respondent seemed free and outgoing and the only interruption was when someone walked in and the person was requested to wait from outside.	

Description of interview
Transcript
I: So tell me about the ministry of lands involvement, okay what factors do you consider regarding safety of pedestrians as regarding road safety as you are demarcating areas around the country?
R: We don’t for us as ministry of lands we don’t, we don’t, that one is embedded in the design of the physical development plans I think you are aware of that we are in charge of physical planning and usually when we are considering the planning we use what we call the physical planning standards and these standards we consider the size of the road you know that the road should be of a minimum, that the road should be of this size. And under - within the sizes of those roads we know that this road is in position to cater for a carriage way, to cater for services and infrastructure and even to cater for the pedestrians the walk ways and so on depending on the planning which is available. 
But as a ministry we are in charge of the physical planning but we may not prepare physical development plans directly for instance for urban councils what we do we monitor those standards what we call the physical planning standards and the physical planning standards are those are the issues that come out that we should have this size of road, we have got to cater for X, Y and Z you know those kind of things road safety inclusive. But I must also admit that due to the tenure we have, the land tenure we have especially in this central region achieving the road sizes the way they are supposed to be like sometimes it becomes a little bit difficult because of the ownership of land. You know people here believe that having a road of 10 meters is a waste, is a waste, so they say aaa, aaa, especially in mailo, mailo land you know they always say that; if my stone, you know there are scenarios where you have the road, and the stone is within the road and you are compelling this owner of the land to provide some distance for a vehicle to pass, for pedestrians to pass and it becomes very challenging so as we speak it is still very challenging but we tackle that under physical planning.
I: so are you saying you don’t cater for urban councils and ..?
R: we do not do
I: you only monitor them?
R: we monitor how they do the planning in very few instances we do the real planning for them, that is when we do the real planning for them but those are very few instances.  Physical planning is decentralized function so it is not done…
I: centrally
R: centrally like by the ministries so still those issues especially where they know that… but we monitor how these plans are prepared because ultimately at the end of the day it is us as the ministry of lands and urban development that do approve those plans and there are a number of check list which in our opinion you can get from the department of physical planning.
I: check list
R: check list of what we envisage from a physical development plan, so when you submit a physical development plan, that is a plan of a town, plan of whatever then it will go through that check list does it have X, does it have Y, does it have Z you know that kind of thing, we have what we call a national physical planning board that approves.
I: national physical planning board
R: national physical planning board 
I: so still even on development we are moving more towards estates now say SEMA properties who views their plans road size wise? 
R: yeah, it is the local councils as I have told you that is a decentralized function so there is what we call physical planning committees and these physical planning committees at the local government level so for them even the submission is made to those councils and they approve then initiate titling for those lands.
I: besides the main challenge that has come up is the land tenure system especially central what other challenges could be hindering us from having roads that can cater for a pedestrian someone with disabilities in terms of planning and implementation because you could be approving a plan that caters for everything but then gradually when the structure comes up it is different what could be limiting that?
R: you see there are two scenarios; one is the planning, then two; is the  implementation, okay, those ones are quite different issues, it is like you can say you don’t have money in your pockets but you say if I get ten thousand shillings I will buy maybe a cup of tea, I will buy my cup, okay, but now the real thing now is to buy a cup of tea to buy whatever because the money is not available so if I am to use that analogy it is the same thing that happens in planning, you plan to have a wider road that will cater for safety, what what in fact this is all over the whole country but the issue it to acquire those corridors, sometimes a challenge comes of compensation, okay acquiring those corridors, and they are quite huge pieces of land those corridors and acquiring those corridors come at a cost to the councils now, and a number of cases councils don’t have those cost. For instance you can’t say I am going to design this area and I want it say ten meters, 
I want a cycling place for cyclists where they will pass, I want the pedestrians where they will pass, I want those kind of things yes you will want your heart wants, the planning is there but now the issue is to acquire those corridors because there is no land which is free, there is no land which is free because they tell us land belongs to the people so if land belongs to the people you don’t just come and grab it so you have to compensate those who have it…and then you start catering for issues like pedestrians, what,.. so the issue is,… apart from the issues of compensation, the resources are not available.  So in a number of cases we plan then the implementation installs you know you cannot move, the heart wants these pedestrians catered for but the resources are not available.
I: thank you, so I will use Kampala because I think we are more familiar with it given a situation that is there as the people are over seeing plans, planning  and how do you think  we could sort of promote safer roads from the planning perspective given what we have how can we….?
R: you know I may not know very much what KCCA I know there are a number of but hopefully you have interacted with KCCA or you will interact with KCCA but this is an independent opinion it is not the technical one which I can give. Kampala would have been okay, I mean it has a number of challenges but the first which I am hearing, which I am also hearing they are closing the roads, to cater for roads, to cater for pedestrians but if you close the roads then you must be in position to also open up a number of roads, or a  number of there are tarmac because we are experiencing a problem of traffic jams, traffic jams is a very big process so the issue is that when you close a road you know that is more traffic jam, so that means if you close that road you are creating another problem somewhere.  As a beginning I would agree with KCCA they can cordon off some roads so that people continue to move, there are scenarios in Kampala where I have seen, I don’t want to call them verandahs but walk ways where people are supposed to walk from, I have seen scenarios where restaurants have cordoned off those areas and an example is this I think it is Javas if I am not mistaken on this road.
I: Boulevard...
R: there is Javas in the corner on this road as you go to Nandos, the former Nandos you know even the sitting space encroaches even on the walk ways those are issues, you first do away with those kind.., as long as it is encroaching on the walk, walk side, because where are pedestrians you are pushing these pedestrians to the roads to walk in the road and when they walk in the road there so number of boda bodas, what they are knocked or something yet they supposed to…
For us in planning we have had a number of challenges as planners and one of them I have told you those are resources and the challenges of open but the support which we are supposed to get even the support for enforcement becomes political even politics play hard, there are scenarios where the enforcement can go and they are chased away because of certain politics, those are politics you want to open, you want to open up a certain … what could I say, you want to open up a place for development to cater for even your issues like the pedestrians but you cannot because of maybe aggrieved by your decision who is politically maybe known somewhere this is what … but the issue in fact in  planning for us  the issue is not about the planning the issue is about implementation how to implement these plans we have it is the biggest problem, if we could implement a plan 60% then it will be one of the best thing it is very hard to  implement that plan we have prepared, it is very, very hard so
I: you mentioned a 60% which I would coming on the other side the 60% which is still not good enough but then you say 60%
R: 60% 
I: so at the moment what percentage are you able to..
R: as we monitor, as we monitor there are even urban councils which are even below 40, which are even 20 you know they are looking at plans as documents there on the wall you know but they don’t put into consideration what they plan talking on ground we as a department I work in the department of this land regulation and compliance we monitor and try to enforce we try to tell these guys to enforce the plans but it is not easy because of the number of priorities these urban councils also have, they have a number of priorities, you are very much aware they also have to provide roads, they also have to provide proper services to communities, they are so many things now here you are you want them to implement them but these are long term documents which can create order including the movement of people the pedestrians and so on.. 
I: still coming from the side I come from I might not be familiar with the processes involved so if let say my small village is declared an urban council what is expected of them planning wise, do they have to first draw a plan by the time they declare  that is urban?
R: yeah if it is declared an urban council, the law doesn’t come out clear on that but in practice that is what happens if a place is declared as an urban council it should prepare a plan but we are reviewing our physical planning act that if a place is declared as an urban area, say we have delineated the boundaries of this particular area then you must have a plan to direct development, to guide you.
I: so in your view I should have a plan and then be declared
R: no, not in my view 
I: I mean what you want as a ministry.
R: the declaration, you are very much aware that some of these declarations are political they wake up one day and they say the town of say which other place
I: Kasubi
R: Kasubi is already in Kampala city but I am talking about a town this small village where you come from, where do you come from?
I: Mayuge
R: Mayuge we can say Mayuge now is a town
I: Mayuge is a town Kigerera subcounty
R: we can say Kigerera now is a town it will be taking these are boundaries, it will take parish x, y, Z now that one we want it to be a town. So now if it is a town for them they can continue working the way they have been working the law doesn’t compel them to prepare a plan you know the law doesn’t compel them but practice for town clerks or leaderships which are there for them they find it by understanding that they can’t development in this town if  they don’t have what a plan and that is what they usually do but the law doesn’t come out clearly and say that if you are declared a town then you must prepare a plan, that one I can tell you we don’t have it but we are amending our law the physical planning act to cater for such instances.  
I: Is the physical planning act publically available?
R: yes, you can get it on our website.
I: talking about the physical planning act what other laws or policies or regulations are advised or do you refer to as you are over seeing…?
R: I have told you we have a physical planning act, we have the physical planning standards and guidelines those ones are comprehensive enough and we also have bylaws according to the plan if you prepare the plan when you prepare a  plan within it the moment the plan is approved I could give you an example I can say that in this particular zone as I do the planning, as a recommendation in the plan that in this particular zone A the plot sizes will be of 100 by 100 or 10 by 10 or whatever size they should have A; tree planting a minimum of 20 trees a minimum of two parking places and the roads you know I can say and roads plan should cater for pedestrian walk ways and those are the issues that can be in an approved physical development plan. And the moment it is approved and it is issued in the gazette it becomes law, even now the approved physical development plan is a document you can use as we have standards the approved physical development plan, we have the act,  the physical planning act then we also have  
I: the standard national physical plan
R: we call it national physical planning, we don’t have a physical planning policy but we have the land use policy, but the land use policy is not that detailed to cater for issues like pedestrian you know those kind of things, but I can assure you that within the physical…but for me a plan is like an architect preparing an architectural plan I come and tell you or you come and tell me xxxxx and you other boss I have forgotten her name 
I: xxxxxxx
R: they can come as citizens of this town of say Mayuge and they tell us even in the beginning planning is supposed to be interactive, you know you do a lot of consultations then you find people like xxxxx and xxxxx and they tell you as stake holders in this particular town for us we would like our town to have a lot of walk ways, pedestrians , for them they have told you similar to your house someone can tell your architect that you know what I want 3 bedrooms, I want a special …, in my bedroom I want a spacious one where I can…, a toilet must be there so that kind of thing, so it is the architect who transfers all those ideas then puts them in a plan. 
So likewise it is the same thing even in planning as you do the planning someone can come and tell you we are having a lot of boda accidents here please design a plan which will cater for, which will create safety for our citizens, or our communities then these other planners in position will go to look at this road size how should it be and this corner here how do I  how can I make this corner a little bit more better in terms of visibility to people who are driving, to people who are cycling, may be the problem here is this.
So the designer of this plan at the end of the day those are the wordings which are going to be in the approved physical development plan, road sizes are going to be this size they will cater for X, Y, Z, the sizes will cater for pedestrians and the minimum distances, I mean the pedestrian lines, I mean walk ways should be of this particular ..those are the things when the designer is doing those are the things he comes up with because at the end of the day you will take back the plan to the stakeholders and then they will tell yes, aah, tell us how have you catered for our road safety because we need safe roads something of that sort, how are you catering for greening because there scenarios when the communities tell you that we have a problem in this place people have cut all trees but when you are coming up with this design we ensure that we shall plant trees along the whatever.. And people who are coming up with development they should put up development with trees or something and then you can even have by laws you can have a bylaw as an urban council now that is at urban level because of implementation      
I: have you had any urban councils in the last five years or so putting up any bylaws relating to maybe it may not be ethical but when you see may be one of the intentions is improving safety on the roads there for people? 
R: you know, they are very few but they are there I can tell you but they are not very many and they have not really in our opinion they are not addressing the real issues now, because you know the issues of pedestrians even us as planners we have a challenge as designers, I am not saying that all planners do good designs. There are planners who think that roads are for vehicles and there are some designers who design the way their kind of thinking that roads are for vehicles alone yet in these days in the planning world we have what we call smart cities and the concept of smart cities what we call urbanism and new urbanism we are talking about the cleaning of cities, we are talking about green energy you know people should be in a position to walk those are the new concepts which are coming on board in this modern age of planning people should be in a position to walk, to ride bicycles so as to conserve energy to address issues of pollution. 
You imagine a  scenario where you can cycle you are in Makerere you can cycle your small bicycle …and you come here and you go back with your bicycle. One it makes you  healthy as you do your work, two you are not using a car, fumes, so now the new designing is like that that is what we call smart growth those are principles now we are adopting worldwide every country is adopting those smart principles where we want even to reduce on the pollution, cities to reduce, we plant trees, I can tell you, you can walk from here up to Kireka, if I make your walking from here up to Kireka very comfortable for you if we plant very good trees, make the walk ways very interesting, as you take…, you can have somewhere where you can put your dust bin so that the view as the images you see as you walk are quite interesting, you can walk from here up to Nakawa and you can’t know than you have walked and all those are design issues. I can walk, and in some of these countries they even shop, they even give you places where you can sit, you can sit and may be buy a soda so that when you walk say from here up to Nakawa you say let me have a seat, let me have a seat and the view you look at the world and you can do it virtually every day you enjoy the walking but if there is this kind of mess we have or something, then you will be forced to board a boda boda and then you go very fast so that you are not knocked.
 So those are the issues by the way those are issues we are following up as a ministry we are adopting, we have just come up with the urban policy.
I: urban policy?
R: yes, may be at later stage someone will get you a soft copy of the urban policy
I: this isn’t yet out?
R: the urban policy? The urban policy is out, it is out..
I: how would I access it?
R: in the department of urban development. 
I: it isn’t yet on the website?
R: I think now it is on the website, depending, on the urban policy and those issues you are talking about which must be there, do I have a copy of the draft… I don’t know, I used to have a draft before,…., I used to have a copy …, you are un lucky I don’t have a copy but these issues that the urban policy is a comprehensive document we have the housing policy, we have the housing policy where did I put that? We have the National Roads policy, but that one you can look at the urban policy, you can look at the housing policy, these are my copies and you read through and see those areas as ministry of lands.
I: do you have soft copies that could be mailed? 
R: you can go to the website, hope fully you know the website.
I: it ministry of lands
R: ministry of lands.www.ug.co
I: dot what?
R: mlu
[Interruption] 
I: dot
R: .ug. whatever you call it www.
I: www. Ug.com
R: but when you put on those things, they will come then you can….
I: national housing policy
R: so these are documents which also are here to address the challenges of urbanization, pedestrian issues 
I: but given all these the policies that are up the urban policy, the housing policy, we have the physical planning act that is under review even if may be Kampala is not salvaged in the next ten years do you see other urban councils and urban centers that coming up might be more friendly to the users, do you think some of these issues might reduce some of these issues by resource inadequacies and politicizing?   
R: the same bedbug which is eating up us, which is eating Kampala is the same bedbug eating up all other urban centers when I use a bedbug it is in quotes. The challenges KCCA is having is the same challenge Jinja is having and is the same challenge Tororo is having they all don’t have enough resources, they all don’t have enough resources, to implement these new changes which we are having they don’t have enough resources. 
But we as ministry of lands and housing and urban development we have noticed and we have had a number of interventions, we have been ahobe knobbing and looking around for resources to assist urban councils to implement their plans because we realized the challenges but not for all so that we are in a position to help out a town like Lira or Gulu or something to prepare a plan, I mean to implement, to open up roads. Just of recent we have a World bank project called Uganda Support to Municipal Infrastructure Development for us we commonly call it here USMID we have been trying to open up roads and putting these issues of pedestrian you see they were roads in some of these municipalities where you could not even walk on this road, you know, I think you have ever seen a scenario where you are on the road and you cannot walk, to walk you are moving you are looking behind, so walking as that, but the intervention all those roads we are putting up roads, we are putting up roads with walk ways you could look at the designs under this project to support municipal infrastructure development (USMID) but that one works only in fourteen municipalities.  
I: which ones?
R: the original municipalities, I will not tell you them if you have been in Uganda, the first fourteen municipalities when you are growing up I know you know them.  
I: but you know things
R: no, but of course they have increased, they have increased but the increase, but if I am talking about the fourteen they are Jinja was there, Entebbe was there, Fort portal, Kabale, Moroto, Arua, Gulu you know those kind of things. Those have always been there all those municipalities we have been having but I will not mention all of them but they are fourteen, it was only one addition which was not there – Hoima, not in the initial one to make it fourteen, Masaka, Mbarara those are the old municipalities we even grew up knowing when we were in P.1, you know that Masaka is a municipality. 
So but now we are opening up roads, and those roads the designs have been catering for even the pedestrians because it was a requirement, it was a requirement so that when you are coming out you don’t just design roads for the sake of cars alone but you must provide roads which can allow people to walk, which can allow us put up  infrastructure it was in their terms of reference making these designs and those terms of reference it is us as a ministry of lands who came up with those because it was a support from the World bank but that is supporting them … , but on their own they also have challenges of implementing these plans.  

I: thank you, but this is my last probe, in the process of designing the … or monitoring what other areas around the country are doing, which other stakeholders are you working with?
R: we work with the, the…for instance if I could give you the municipalities that project where we are working as we do monitor we work with what we call municipal development forums, they are stakeholders and they have a number of actors there, they have the business communities, they have religious the leaders, the political leaders within the municipal development forum. It is a participatory approach of handling urban affairs you know in their areas, even as we do the designing you have to talk to them they tell you a number of issues but it is an array of a number of actors, business, religious, political even some technical people there but within them they form an association a forum and they have leadership and we can work together with that leadership and they also have a way of meeting they also have their you know quarterly meetings and so on, it is quite, now we work with those ones, we also work with town clerks, we also work with what we call the physical planning committees.  
I: for the different areas
R: yeah for the different areas, every urban council is mandated to have a physical planning committee, we also have ... even central government, now  there is where we work with other ministries like ministry of local government, for instance I could tell you if I found out that Mayuge it has a town clerk and the planning is talking about XYZ and intentionally this town clerk is not in the position to undertake, to implement this function but for us we don’t discipline him but we can write to a sister ministry that officer X has failed to heed to our whatever it is our opinion that you take a disciplinary action on this officer so as to implement. Then ministry of local government has a direct supervisor and tell him hey come on why are you not implementing this whatever, you know that kind of thing, so a number of actors actually.

I:  thank you, so you have mentioned quite a number of stake holders but besides local government, are any other ministry like ministry of health come on board because health could come and argue on how to exercise more, these days we are moving towards the Non communicable diseases and policies under internal affairs, could you say may be in Kampala it is this design we are facing this problem so as you are designing another area can you try to say this doesn’t come out are those other ministries trying to come out? 
R: what I can say of now we have been working with a thin of NBAs but we are working with them but on the side of health on the side of roads, when we were developing a physical planning standards and guidelines, standards and guidelines these were the key actors we consulted, okay, we went for instance to education and we asked them tell us what are your standards, if you are a school, because for us we are interested in the space standards are one of the major factors of standards is for space. 
Then they tell you, they start telling you, you know what, if it is a school of 1000 pupils you need at least a football ground, then we capture that, then if it is a school of…., then the UNRA have an array of roads, the sizes and what have you, then they can tell you this size can cater for these pedestrians…, you know all these, all these actors were consulted that is what they were supposed to do so that when they come back as we consolidate all these findings to come up with space requirements then that is what we call physical planning standards and guidelines we are amalgamating all this information coming from an array of MBAs. 
You know even the health they will tell you, because for us we want to know if it is a population of 10,000 people, say how many health centers do we need and then you know the health centers should be two or three something of that sort because they also have for every so… we shall have a health center, on every sh… shall have a health center and it is now the physical planning  to put into play to say that the space requirement for this kind of thing should be four acres, or two acres, you know that kind of thing because for us we get it from health and we interpret that and put in space and even show where these centers are going to be.
So it was an interaction at that particular stage, for us by the time we have our physical planning standards and guidelines we have already catered for what health is doing what whatever, but as I have told you.  You know the physical planning profession; I don’t know you are in which profession?     
I: I am into public health.
R: you are into public health and I don’t know much about public health but there are professions which are evolving, physical planning is an evolving profession, architecture especially professions in the built environment they are evolving if you look at the architecture of the medival times it is not the same architecture of this time  
I: and the technology which are being used
R: even the technologies which are used, the laws which are involved are also different so technology is changing I can tell you for the urban planners or the architects of the 70s they were using … but as you speak now you are using soft wares, arch cards and auto cards and so many things there is what we call geographical information systems is what we are using in planning and others and even in GIS an array of soft wares which we are using which are now making the profession more simpler more understandable so everything I can tell you now things are changing.
Now we have what we call “the smart growth principles”, now the smart growth as I have told you, you will read about them, the new urbanism, they are now talking about health, they are promoting health, walking, cycling, you know the greening reducing on the energy, the consumption less cities with less pollution more lively that is what is coming on board now. And as you know Uganda we are trying hope fully we shall catch up because even in other worlds they are trying to catch up but where we are with government support hope fully we shall reach there. There are some vivid examples of smart cities of smart growth where you know you sleep here, you sleep for instance here and you are working there or you sleep here and may … that is also, why they are coming up with this kind of intervention even to reduce on the cost of providing infrastructure, if I stay in Kireka that means the utility company has to take the water to Kireka but if it is densification in such areas I can walk to this one, even the companies which are providing the power, the water supplies, the costs are minimal  compared to taking the whole, you know if I sleep here and I know I can walk and  go to the golf course and run and even walk you know that kind of thing and even the we call them the pedestrian premix are also available and I walk. As I have told you if you make a suitable, beautiful more green it makes walking interesting. 
I: thank you very much
R: hope fully I have added some small value
I: you have given us a lot of value and the challenges that we face as we imagine so many things.
R: yeah so many.
I: I appreciate your time thank you very much.
R: you are welcome.
………………………………………….END……………………………………………………..
Date of interview	21/03/2018	
Interviewer		
Department	Police office 	
Position of respondent		
Name of Respondent 		
Duration of interview	46 minutes	
Transcribed by		
Interview setting and notes	Interview happened at the CPS kampala in the IT department. The interview started on time but was interrupted twice and she had two patients in the hospital and so we had to be brief and allow her go attend to the patients. 	

I: Tell me about the policies involvement in the road safety education awareness where there is a department?
R: In traffic we have a department called traffic liaison office [traffic liaison office] yes please traffic community liaison office it deals with the sensitization of people all types of people now and I do that work of teaching the people mostly this term here we have been involved in teaching children about road safety school primary children. [Okay] in different schools or parts of the country.
I: So you have covered all parts of the country?
R: I have not covered all parts of the country [no not you individually] yes we cover the whole country.
I: That’s is there focus on specific districts or the focus is uniform all through?
R: Uniform, uniform like this time even you may come today here to tomorrow when am in Mbarara am in Kisoro am in Iganga just like that.
I: How equipped is this department of community liaison?
R:It is not all that much equipped but when there is some money for facilitation am given a chance and which dispose mostly those schools where there near the highway or near the road sides you know there is a problem with schools near the road side[yes],like we have children coming from villages right from nursery to p.7 you pick a child from the village you bring to Kampala this child has never crossed a road whereby three vehicles move together so when they come to such place they get so many problems and that’s when we get so many people children involved hit each they don’t care of the you know they think as children so when we go and talk to the we make programs with the schools we go and teach,  they accept us to intervene or to interfere with their lessons we go and talk to the schools, school administration we are given the children we teach the children we get questions from them also[okay]
I: So from what you told me it seems focus is on schools that are along the highways and urban areas.
R: According to our stake holders like safe right to way theirs is mostly along the highways but ours we go even to those deep deep places according to the police program we go further than the highways only yes.
I: Do you beyond does this community liaison officer also target the other road users beside the children?
R: Yes we have Bodabodas, passengers we go to the parks stages we go taxi drivers we talk to every person passengers in vehicles we enter Buses talk to passengers in the Buses you know yeah.
I: Besides the intervention that you’re using currently the way you’re doing business how do you think it could be improved to increase coverage of your work?
R: You know sensazation it is not the only police to do it, but everybody you know road safety is how do I say it, belongs to us all me and you because road safety is something that we don’t have boundaries like politicians like doctors like professors we are in the same boat so many of us have buried people due to road safety, everybody I think every home at least so when we put our hands together I think we can reduce on road crushes now the reason why I think the government choose only to go to primary schools, if a child is built from the bottom even if tomorrow he is a driver he would remain with one sense that he got last time when he was a child in a certain school about road safety. And when we talk to these children you will get they have since whereby there is a difference with grown up  drivers they reason and they give their views whereby in future we think we shall have better drivers than the drivers we have today because  they didn’t acquire knowledge now for them they know if I get a motorbike I must get a driving permit but do they remember to buy a motorcycle you have to come to Kampala you have to go to the town and drive now I have talked to this baby of p.1 nursery about if you want to drive when you are grown up you are 16 and above get a driving permit, he will think the officer said I will get a driving permit it’s hard for a child  to forget that they will say the other police teacher said I must stop to cross the road I must stop because vehicles don’t have eyes and children mostly think the eyes of the the[lights]the lights of the vehicle are the eyes of the vehicle but we are telling them they are not you make sure you stop before you cross even if the driver stops look at the eyes of the driver  has he seen you if he has not seen you don’t cross, whereby today if you get somebody coming from my  village deep there or your village deep there they will run but my child here the one I have talked too while crossing the road this child will not run he will check as he is crossing but if you get some old person he will run without even checking where the vehicle is coming from so that difference between these two groups and I think after five ten years we shall have better drivers.
I: So how long years have you conducted these campaigns?
R: It is now since 2012 there but I had a break somewhere where but at least 2012 that’s when we started with schools hmmm.
I: So roughly you can say how many schools have been reached?
R: I can’t mention the number right now but at least we have reached some schools we have reached some districts.
I: So in carrying out the road safety education what laws or guidelines or policies do you bench on get the information and tailor the information to the children?
R: We are using the traffic highway code[traffic highway code] yes the rules and the guides guidelines of the [is it different from the road and safety ACT of 1998 ]yes [is the same]it is not the same [how could I access this one]now the traffic highway code has rules and guidelines don’ts and dos,donts and dos they tell you in the morning when  you wake up you must feel yourself, when you are crossing the road look at this give way to other people even if it your right but you see somebody coming to hit you let him go, then the highway the traffic ACT it is law your penalized but in the highway code you’re not penalized.
I: Thank you so since you have been conducting this program since 2012 so we were saying what has been the impact this impact or effect of the education that you give?
R: At least some road discipline with the children they can cross when you talk to them they can cross the big ones take the responsibility of caring for their those young most ones, then they are also used to other good pedestrians they can talk to the pedestrians and ask them to cross them where there no police officers then there is some at least some reduction what I think is reduction if a child is involved in an accident in a certain area I normally ask if I have ever been to that school at least there is some good discipline [so you would say that] and there is reduction in playing on the road while moving on the road as pedestrians and those children who use vehicles to reach the school they normally tell their parents they advise their parents your doing this but the other police teacher said no you’re not supposed to do this one day it happened I went to a certain school this other school former Kampala parents this one in Bukoto is it Bukoto which was the Kampala parents [city parents]is it city parents they split there this one on [Kirya road]they had an accident the child said no I have my friend in Jinja road by then I was in Jinja road lets go and report there somebody has hit us lets go and report there so the child brought the parent to the police station and said madam you were at our school today and somebody has hit us we have look for the vehicle at least make sure this gentleman gets what I taught him so we go to the driver he abandoned the vehicle somewhere we got it later the man was prosecuted  now this boy you can’t tell the boy that police is bad no.
I: What challenges are you facing or have you faced as you carryout these activities?
R: Haa challenges are many somewhere you know, at times funds are not enough [okay] I would wish reach every school but funds are not enough yeah but that’s my target if possible if they would say this is only for sensitization of schools I can’t get tired to move to schools and I wish to go to those schools but no transport no what.
I: Any other challenges?
R: That’s the most challenge teachers are good when you tell them even if you wake up now you go to a certain school you say I have come to teach your children about road safety they are positive about it yeah, but challenges are about facilitation how to reach these schools.
I: From our interaction it is clear now that the main focus on this the primary school children and those in Kindergarten but as you and I know lately we have smart phones that I think some secondary schools children might be moving with [smart phones] yes so don’t you think  with time we might be need to expand this program to reach out to them because someone can easily whatsapp on the road or?
R: Yeah like we have one for primary it is ziz the zebra [it’s what]ziz the zebra by vivo energy when you go to the play store you put in ziz the zebra it will come out and it gets children how to move there some questions for them then but I have it ziz the zebra you see how it guides the children how you have to go over the humps, how you have to as a driver what are you supposed to do there even some simple questions by the way we have some groups like vivo energy we have also educative programs and I have been moving with them  [vivo energy] vivo energy I have been moving with them also they have also an educated program for the schools we have moved in these city schools city primary schools I mean not city primary school but schools in the city yes, schools in the city they are the ones who put that game there [application]yes [ziz] ziz the zebra[ I will check out on it] they have even competitions at the end of the year we have competitions we collect   those schools we have been their quiz then they are given gifts for the school and for the individuals but [the participants]the participant yes which is very good [and still its focus is on primary]yeah, yeah.
I: Okay given the main challenges you’ve mentioned the shortage of funds and lack of transport how do you think this can what do you think is the best way of going about with this addressing these challenges?
R:Police can’t work alone if any person can come in and I say am proposing this for the police it is well and good [okay]they can fund the radio, TV programs radio programs yes we have to talk to the public about it hmmm.
I: Besides vivo energy safe way right way do you have any partners implementing?
R: Vivo energy with total and this other then vivo is for shell [yes vivo is for shell] yes there so many groups there, there so many groups and then also safe way right way also has so many groups that one including total [so safe way right way works with total] yeah and other groups then vivo energy shell and other groups [so these petroleum companies are working together] yeah they are assisting yes please.
I: I think we are almost done but in this education you’re targeting primary schools children what did you base on to put your focus there and may be go with that particular intervention.
R:Children are more vulnerable than the  grownups because they can’t think for themselves[okay]you know it is very bad for a grown up person like me to tell you I dint see where the child came from what will the child tell you because when you’re driving we say in defensive driving you have to drive five vehicles the one you’re in the one in front of you the one behind you the one on the right and left but now a child when a child is crossing if  he says my ball has crossed all the brain is on that ball no another whoever much you hoot for the child will say I have to pick my ball so that my ball is not crushed. The child will never think that for him or her can be crushed but what he is fighting for can be crushed so we think they are no vulnerable than this other group the other groups.
I: Okay is there any other reasons that you based on besides vulnerability?
R:Then also to pass on the education pass on the information they are our ambassadors because when you talk to a child when you talk to a grownup it is very difficult for a grown up to go and tell the friends but when you talk to the children they will pass on the information to any group to either the grownups their friends or whatever group they meet like oh today mummy we were with a policeman in our school, what had he come to do at your school then the person narrates but when you talk to the grownups they will never go to tell the young ones why I went to their place so they are our ambassadors we need to use them.
I: Thank you how are your staffing levels as department and road safety education specifically? 
R: We have other RTO in all regions and all districts regional traffic officers {so they are they are directly in charge of safety education] yeah even if I left this place I must liaise with regional traffic officer of that particular place then the OC traffic of that particular place [okay] for mobility [so we would say staffing] even if am not there they must carry it out and they are carrying it out.
I: So do you have a time table for this day am here the other day am there how activities are happening?
R: We have the time table right now according to my time table am suppose to go Masaka am supposed to go to Mbarara, Kiruhura then that place before Kirihura, lyantonde that’s where am supposed to go I make a program I call them like now if I go my program police program goes through I tell them we made a program talk to our people am coming on such a day so that the schools give us time on those particular days we are supposed to be there.
I: Thank you I think my questions are done but what position do you exactly occupy in this department?
R: My ranking is am xxxx of police [xxx of police] that’s my rank yeah.
I: Yes but I mean in the department?
R: Traffic xxxx officer [traffic xxxx] yes please.
I: Thank you madam I may be making a mistake you are xxxxxx
R: xxxxxxx.
I: xxxxx thank you.

Date of interview		
Interviewer		
Department	KCCA	
Position of respondent		
Name of Respondent 	
	
Duration of interview	49 minutes	
Transcribed by		

Position of the interviewee: xxxxxxxx 
Organization: KCCA
Date of interview:	27 March 2018  	
Setting of the interview;	The interview was in the xxxxx office with a Road Safety engineer, xxxxxxx. We were not interrupted and the interviewee was able to answer all the questioned asked. xxxxxx also answered some of the questions.
I:Okay thank you so much for agreeing to meet with us (your welcome)my first question, my first question is about involvement in road safety tell us about a bit of road safety(road safety)yes.
R:Generally by the fact that I head the directorate that over sees roads in Kampala I get involved in road safety and I get involved in it by way of preparing  road designs that are friendly to pedestrians and that includes for example constructing roads that have raised high walkways to protect pedestrians(okay)making sure that there is signage on the roads, (okay)and also marking of roads especially pedestrian crossings also construction of road humps (okay)to slow down traffic(yes)and thereby allow pedestrians to cross safely so I implement all those measures to ensure that the road is friendly  to all road users including pedestrians, (okay)and I am guided by the road design manual which is prepared by ministry of works and transport (okay)and then the general specification for roads and bridges it’s also produced by ministry of works and transport(okay)and then am also actively involved in the national road safety council.(okay)every agency actually which is in charge of roads is supposed to participate in the activities of national road safety council yeah so generally that’s how  we get involved of the road safety
I: Okay so you talked about a number of interventions that are being implemented and what are there monitoring in the evaluation systems in place to evaluate these interventions?
R: Uhmm there is quite some work to do in that area we don’t have very robust monitoring and evaluation you know those activities to monitor how well you know how the statistics are changing in terms of  accidents and what (yes)all we know is that when we do some intervention we get some feedback(hmmm)from the public that now the danger has been what inverted something like that if for example there is an accident spot and people are complaining about it many times and there’ve been accidents and say we come in with something like a road hump to slow down traffic we get feedback that now there is a problem for example if there is a school and we put such measures we get feedbacks that now the rate of accident has come down on we don’t actually count (yes)we don’t have the resources yet(yes)and then also we usually do some rounds with the traffic police in the city and they identify for us what they think are dangerous spots(okay) and we agree on what needs to be done we either put there more signage put there some humps make the road one way things like that so that we can improve safety on the roads[okay] now one other intervention we are trying to institutionalize  road safety audits, road safety audits and he is in charge of that ,so what we are trying to institutionalize is that every road design that we do much as the designer is aware of safety it needs to be reviewed by a safety expert you know there is this feeling that after all the road design manual that tells me what to do you know to attend to safety issue and all that but still we found that it is not enough it needs to have an independent review by someone just looking at safety aspects of the road and then there after he comes up with his comments and the design can be improved now we want to have an audit with design stage at implementation stage and also during operation of the completed road so that is one intervention we have started doing already we have done design audits on the ongoing roads that we are doing now, now during implementation we monitor to ensure that the safety aspects are actually implemented they are not thrown on the side (okay)in due course and then after the road has been open to traffic we also we are going to start monitoring to see whether the road has made you know the pedestrian  safer or the pedestrian is now in more danger after the new road has been opened yeah.
I: Okay so these interventions that you talked about have they been fully implemented or partially implemented?
R: Some have been fully implemented especially those that we do on already existing roads (yes) the road is in the operation the surface is good the whole thing is good apart from safety the speeds are too high and that’s when you have to come in to put in some humps to reduce the speed so some of them have already been done and some are under implementation.
I: Which ones are under implementation I know you talked about the road safety audit?
 R: Yes we have some six contracts running and each contract is a package of roads, total number of roads total kilometers is about 43 to 45 scattered in different parts of the city (okay) so for all those safety audit has been done at design stage so some of those roads are almost complete some are just starting so for those we have not yet fully implemented the (the audit) the safety interventions
I:Okay and apart from the road safety audit are there other interventions that you are bringing on board that are not yet fully implemented but there plans that you have?
R:There some, some of them are like for example we have some open ditches for the roads open drains on the roads (okay)whereby the pedestrian does not have enough space  between the open drains  and the car on the other side which is using the road so we have a program of covering all the open drains in the city and using that space on top of it to create a walk way(okay)and we are doing that progressively because of money issues yeah so you find that if you have a road and on the side of it there is a drainage an open drain, fine there may be some space in the edge for the pedestrian to walk(hmmmm)but it’s still so very unsafe and the cars can easily encroach on that space so if you convert this space by just putting in a pipe and then you put on a walk on op have used the same space for the vehicle and for the drain and for the  pedestrian (okay)so that is a program we are doing progressively there so many roads with open drains not so or something we can complete very quickly especially for the roads that are still Grable it really doesn’t make sense to create a very nice walk way with a muddy surface we still have to upgrade the roads first before even doing that(yes)so those are some of the challenges ,then the other intervention we are doing is to have street lighting(yes)a lot of accidents actually happen at night and most of them happen because of poor visibility not time so if we can have functional street lights all our roads even traffic I think it is going to have an effect in reducing(in reducing pedestrian accidents actually all the studies we have done indicate that most of the victims are pedestrians (yes)it is the car and pedestrians now we have the Bodabodas are also taking up a large it is mainly pedestrians.
I: Even from our crush reports from the police yes it’s the pedestrians.
R: So we have to do a lot in that area we are to introduce some traffic lights and these ones too they  kind of assist someone crossing the major junction because all of them have a phase for pedestrians and we are doing it in such a way that at whatever time a pedestrian comes you can you can press a button and request it tells you to wait until you get your chance to cross (okay)so all those are interventions but I must say a very large part of it, it remains as education, education is something that really needs to be emphasized now we as KCCA we may not be best place to do that education but perhaps the traffic police and road safety council then they need to do a lot of education a lot of it is through bad driving yeah poor use of the road (yes so) may be  design the adverts for radio and TV they will be there very soon, that is very important KIDP is I think  Kampala institutional and  infrastructure development project and it is funded by the world bank(okay)so under that project we have designed some animations some animations someone can put on TV and show how a pedestrian should cross the road (okay)some time back I don’t know if your attentive on NTV, UNRA have put on the road advert to explain the road reserve and we put on some animated you know some cartoon showing you where the road reserve starts and where it stops so we are trying to do something like that [and also there is another part in media where they’ve allowed users to compete with designs road safety education massage and the general project I think for encouraging everyone to participate so again it’s just trying to make sure that people are very much aware of road safety and we hope because  we mean it’s the mandate of the national road safety council and that we have to make sure that our roads the roads that we  are  designing we have done the  audits we need to be used properly as well as educating road users so that is ongoing,   may be the  pedestrians walk ways[yes] that is something we want to do we are starting in a small way, have a continuous pedestrian walk way, walk ways all over the city but eventually they will all get connected (okay)so we must have a continuous pedestrian( so that where someone can walk and attempt to jump off okay).
I: Are you planning to have all these interventions done in all the divisions or?
R: In all the divisions but you’ll find that some divisions have a bigger share of tarmac roads so those ones kind of get first priority to get better walk ways because you can’t really improve on gravel roads so much you can’t really improve its walking surface until you actually done with the whole road but there is a plan to do it all over the city (okay) to cover all the divisions. (okay)yeah
I:And then talking about the target populations I know you’ve been talking about the pedestrian and are there particular interventions that target different groups for example maybe school going, children or the elderly or the disabled because they are all pedestrians but maybe with different needs(your right)or different categories of road users.
R: Actually with the disabled we always want to have walk ways that are friendly to the disabled whereby at the end of the walk there is no step but the cub is deeped into the ground to allow say someone with a wheel chair to seamlessly move from the walk way across the road and then climb another walk way so that is something we have made part of our design (okay)of course there is need for a lot of supervision because many contractors are not aware of these things unless you really insist  you will find that he has completed his nice walk way but still left a step assuming that everybody can jump over that step, but we are making sure that in all our contracts something like that is put in place then also some of our new traffic lights they have the capacity to produce a certain sound especially for the visually impaired isn’t it yeah, you touch  the low then there is a spin  so the signal is going specific  that person calls for example he is blind and it touches in other words it demands for a signal when the signal turns green for the pedestrians there is a spin under,  so if you touch there it starts spinning that means you’re allowed to cross of course there is a lot of education that is needed.
I: So at what parts are those, what in Kampala have you?
R:Where we have junctions for example fair way [okay]parts there is also, there is also the sound[audio]the audio it has not yet been activated [hmmm]but you find that if okay during the normal the other cycles of traffic safety it gives a certain sound  at certain frequency feedbacks but when the time comes to cross the frequency increases so if you listen attentively you can’t see but you can hear the sound it’s like telling you time to cross [hmmm]we have not yet activated it you know we are still in the testing phase but some of those, those are the ingredients but again a lot of education [a lot of education ]there so many people in Kampala here who even fear to press that button, normal people but even fear to touch it [I hadn’t noticed that ] mean so they were previously used to the other lights which had this mandatory green you dint have to touch it  but we found that that type of light it wastes a lot of time because even when there is no one crossing it will bring a green phase so better to request get your green phase and then allow other users in other direction.
I: Okay and that is being done but sensitization?
R: I think education is something that is really crucial you need to teach people even motorists need to be taught you find that when they reach the stop line your supposed to stop at the stop line and you drive the car onto the pedestrian walk way such that even the green phase when the green phase comes to a pedestrian he has to walk through [the cars] the cars so a lot of education is needed.
I: So I know you talked about the a bit of the impact of some programs you mentioned coming in from the public and the public saying there is been a reduction maybe crushes so but is there anything more that you would like to add on what you think has been the impact of these programs other than what you already told us?
R: The impact of the road safety programs [yes] well uhmm for example let’s say if am talking about a school [yes] which in existence and the pupil will always cross from there it has had a wider impact in that even the parents feel their children are safe crossing the road [yes] so it has made these areas you know more livable you know for many people.
I: And what mechanisms do the parents use to give you that feedback how do those schools give that feedback to?
R: The parents usually complain to the school and the school writes to us [hmmm] so they write to us ask us most time they ask for humps but sometimes you feel humps are not the best [the solution] the best thing to do so you have to give the technical advice necessary for them to implement, sometimes they are the ones to implement the intervention [hmmm]an example is Green hill academy they came up with the [over pass]an over pass which we approved looked at the designs and it was okay we approved it so humps alone wouldn’t be enough.
I: Yeah okay, the over pass was a good intervention yes what are the challenges that you face in implementing these road safety policies and programs.
R:The Challenges [hmmm] the challenges one of them is funding [funding] hmmm funding is the challenge because if for example your building a road with a raised walk way [hmmm] it would be more expensive than a road with an open way okay, because for a raised walk way you have to buy these pipe culverts burry them into the ground construct the cubs raise the walk way so it’s much more  expensive ,yeah so funding is one of them then in some cases the land the availability of land  if for example you wanted to have walk ways on either side of the road the land can limit you and yet you don’t have enough money to compensate whoever may have encroached on the road so you need more one walk way on the side its better than nothing so sometimes land is what [is a challenge, expensive)is a challenge,  what else is lack reliable data because the enginery perspective we always want to tress where the accidents took place the way how data is collected here is that if you go to police they will only tell you the police that along Jinja road they’ve recorded around a hundred accidents but they don’t tell you where and there was a project in ministry of works that was going to help us making sure that we can get GPS coordinates for  each accident so that even after years especially when am doing an audit I can go back and reconstruct the scene of the accident [yes]and try to investigate whether the cause was because of the infrastructure or maybe it was human aspect [a human yes ]maybe aspect or you know because right now in the current  state you can’t tell it is only one  people to tell you that we are having so many accident at this point then you go you try to look around what could be the problem is it because of this cub, because of this pole is it because of if we had reliable data and you can trace back you tell the map you map them on the roads you see you get your black spots then you study and then you start sketching the environment can I change the environment to influence the behaviors of road users so they can reduce on accidents but at the moment you can’t[ you don’t have that data] and I think if there is any intervention in this country  that project implemented for you because right now it’s at 75percent [actually ministry of works is working with school of public health I think there is some money at school where they are working and we had decided to work together to see if we do a pilot study and use the GPS and see how things will change so] because it does work for the few times when we were in the UK we actually we were given data from you know town council from the police and its easy you can plot where the accident are , even if it happened 10years ago and you can see that someone probably that someone  first knocked the tree so the tree was the first hazard  then this and that then you can do something with the environment but right now if I tell you tell ten accidents  happened along Jinja road so where so what was the problem , so what  can I do and you look at the road you see everything is normal [you see normal] so what caused it until we get that then you know we keep guessing at the end of the end we have interventions that are not evident based they are just  but we think it can work[we think ]when actually may not be true because the culture and behavior here is completely different when you look at these standards though they are Ugandan designed standards but they have you know they are imported  you get it so now if you lack research to customize these standards you know to in cooperate in the behavior of these road users then they are going to get it wrong, in case the point right now in Europe they will tell you they are reviewing their audits their road safety guidelines because with the new technology what’s app people are walking what’s apping so it changes how they should actually design roads because people[distracted walking]exactly [now I think they I think debate in the]now they can ask you [in the outside] especially if they can ask you what is the impact of social media to road safety here in Uganda what can we say you just go into guess but it’s there,[even in cars] texting while driving and   you will knock a pedestrian so (it is a research gap and the data gap but at least that’s why we exist we exist and)but also there needs to be more interaction between the enforcers of the police and the technical people who design the infrastructure, yeah because for example what he was talking about I went to Singapore  sometime to visit their road safety center they had information which you could actually put on paper and be able to design you know to remove the problem that causes obstacles that causes accidents and at other particular location so our police I think they need more training on that I don’t know what kind of training they go through to become traffic police officers or maybe they keep changing them [they keep changing them]one day you could be in field force units in these pickups the next day you’re on the road they just give you armless so they need to be trained better [so there is a gap in skills]even a gap in skills yeah so they need to be able to pick information which should make sense to the technical person yeah[to inform you at the technical level]yeah.
I: And which brings me to the question on how do you make the decision to implement this intervention where because like you said there is a data gap and what so what informs your decision to put a hump to put a hump here to put a roundabout here or put a traffic light how do you choose you mentioned many interventions so I probably may not say for humps or for what generally?
R: Well what we do mainly complaint persistent complaint we send their technical people like you some other engineers they look at the location try to make some observations how is traffic moving in this area how do pedestrians move and then make some proposals they could be two or three for you and then from the field we come back here we discuss them and agree on what to do and many times they work [many times they work] many times.
I: Are there times that you consider and do not implement?
R: Yes there some that we consider but we get you know of course money issues no budget you can’t do them immedistely.
I: Okay like which ones?
R: Uhmm I think you would know that better ,but I want now to point you to a place in Jinja road as you are coming down from Lugogo [yes] towards the Shoprite area used to have a big hump [yes] but that was before the traffic lights because we didn’t have money to put there traffic lights and yet we want to have a turning a right tunnel/turn from Jinja side into Lugogo bypass we had to slow down traffic [yes] and used a big hump  okay [yes] now when we got  money that bought the lights the big  hump was no longer put actually it was making the lights  not perform that well because it would slow down the traffic when  they get the green they again have to go over you know the hump so you end up releasing  fewer cars and we had to cut it away, it’s no longer there now so things like that budget can constrain you and you do something [and then you observe]yeah you observe later on  replace it with something else (one of the critical for example generally speaking pedestrians foot ranges work  UMI  but the one of UMI particularly we all know that they really need it because when students are crossing it’s really a struggle but the budget I think can cover the figures to have the pedestrians foot range  there, its over 3,000,000/= and that’s not  small money for us in terms of road construction we would have done so many roads so we have a challenge there, but to respond to the question what informs decision of course one is having the obvious one is practices because we know if we are not doing research locally here [yes]then  something’s are tested and they are working [like speed]exactly we know the use of speed it must be you know what can happen[yes]here as a team as the leader said when you get complaint and request from road users they always go and try to inspect and check what can we can do but also work with the traffic office of course they are scattered all over the city the they field officers always know this was that unless when you interact with them they can say you know am in Charge of this junction but  accidents always happen here[hmmm]then that one tells you, you need to do sometimes about it and sometimes as pedestrians there they give you feedback but actually now it’s working [hmmm]so the other time people were complaining about crossing but now people are crossing and you feel happy and probably if it has worked here we think it can work in the other division and at the other division so you know we keep on improving like that and of course we know [okay]there still many gaps, they are still many gaps.
I: So I know you’ve already talked about a number of interventions targeting pedestrians some target pedestrians directly [yeah] but some are just part of the road general road users and pedestrians benefit because they are the most vulnerable road users so are there any interventions that we haven’t mentioned that target pedestrians that they may not be direct to pedestrians but pedestrians benefit that KCCA has implemented?
R: Well I think when you look at benefits of all road users and more especially the pedestrian part of it for example where we have had narrow roads we’ve had motorists occupying the middle space that was for pedestrians so it would mean like if I had a much wider road and these road users have their space then they won’t encroach on the space for pedestrians so instance you know that this space that was reserved for pedestrians is actually for them without it to be encroached by other parties.
I: Okay so widening the roads?
R: Yeah widening the roads especially at the center ,it is helping us to make sure that pedestrians at the roads safer and also how accidents happen rarely do you have an accident between a pedestrian and a pedestrian [yes]so that means if I can take good care of motorists ideally I have taken good care of pedestrian like as long as  am in position to segregate one way or the other  making sure that I reduce the conflicts then it’s going to achieve high service of safety for example when a junction as already told  if you know that you’ve created certain conflicts and you’ve given pedestrian phases to pedestrians then you are very much sure that even more specific leave alone pedestrians you reduce between vehicle and vehicle and cyclists and of course for bodabdas it’s still a big point because its again enforcement they don’t follow anything, they don’t follow any regulations,[even street lights]actually street lights are meant to light the road not necessarily where there pedestrians but you find that indirectly pedestrians also benefit [okay]yeah because they are always looking on the road.
I:Yeah and actually reduced visibility is one of the risk factors for pedestrian road crushes he talked about the reduction of conflicts [yes] and I know this department is designed and we plan on also trying to get useful for the planning department but I would like to know more about the reduction of conflicts apart from walk ways are there any other interventions in design that  you have at design level maybe planning might be different and they may say we are dedicating these roads to buses and we don’t want any but are there at design in this departments any interventions that have been done to reduce conflicts between a pedestrian and a truck pedestrian and?
R: I think majorly in term when we come to design where we are expecting so much interaction in terms of conjunctions crossing that is where we have multi of conflicts so where we signage definitely almost all the conflicts and some areas for some junctions we channelize them so in other words probably at the beginning we had a very open junction then we add a cub so we separated this Lane.
I: Also the cubs you’re talking about these ones that are [in the end of the road] that are at block yes so that the pedestrians cant cross.
R:Yes so where we have space for some roads that are wider we put a medium and  a cub or if it’s very big now like Jinja road we have a green or red and green so definitely you don’t expect  head on collisions now for example  on Jinja road because we’ve separated the conflicts that would have happened because some conflicts have happened [yes]because some accidents happen where someone probably was going to overtake and ends up in the other lane so  at design stage depending on the land requirements if you have land then you in position to do that for some junctions they have had so many conflicts someone is trying to go in a wrong lane if you put a cub and strictly can knock me such a time you’ve seen some of the mediate on our roads where we put concrete barriers and again we are trying to reduce conflicts because people want to come and make[yes] several times and which they are creating more conflicts which result to accidents so we keep doing that so we monitor how they are using the roads and if we think such interventions can work [then you have put up with].
I: So are those all [please take some water] as we are about to conclude thank you very much [how many minutes] at three okay.so basically we are now winding up and again you talked about the impact or effect of the interventions that you have got from the public and you mentioned that there has not been a formal evaluation by your department to before you put an intervention and after to see what difference because but are there any reports you have?
R: Well the reports will come from the public they are not written [okay they are not written] so they will not tell you that okay before so many people were being knocked per week and now it is like this but they can testify that now the situation is much what is much better we need to improve data collection you know that is something which is really its rarely thought about when the budgets are being prepared just collecting transition.
I: It shows the impact of [the trends] the trends and it speaks so loud and you can see before and after.
R: But I think now we need to think of you know some standard information we shall be collecting annually, because we now have a budget for under road fund  we have a budget for road safety isn’t it so we are going to start thinking about it there is something you talked about regarding school children and we were thinking of a project a school sustainable school bus we have not yet started the study but it is something we want to think about to encourage parents to use a school bus to take their children to school or even other means but it was mainly to reduce congestion because you find that everyone moves within the same time and in the morning which creates a lot of congestion yet if people were to move in a wider time band probably you wouldn’t see the congestion because it spread the peak but now every car user has to reach school at 7 that means everybody will go at the same time and they over whelm the capacity of the road so we are trying to see why we don’t we have a good school bus system in place which good enough to entice you  and you put your kid there to be sure that they will reach safely, of course people are worried about safety of their children how are they is someone going to get him or her the bus is it the school so we have designed a study to first of all go to these schools sensitize them about it and then get to know the origins and destinations  the origins of all the children at the school which routes do they take and then be able to design a root of the bus and we want to interest the school to have these shares of the bus system to have shares so that they can own it[yes]and the child can get onto the bus maybe have a card an electronic card he or she can swipe and you a parent can be able to log onto the system and know which the child was picked the child was dropped something like that.
I: Okay you talked about the lack of data that is a gap I was wondering because different populations like Kampala have different number of pedestrians is there any information available on the pedestrian volumes in different locations?
R: Wasn’t that  part of transport study but share a micro scale (okay)(we have a share of  pedestrians basically)but you can tell by the social economic status different parts of the city that this area has more cars and this  one less maybe it has more public transport like personal cars for example if you went to Ntinda , Bukoto the car ownership is higher Muyenga side then when you go to Bwaise there more pedestrians so you can tell which areas have pedestrians maybe just going back to the question you had asked why have we not had formal written monitoring reports and again it goes back if we don’t have available data what kind of report are you going to be  written as,  going to say you think that accidents have reduced but can you provide evidence so there you have a challenge because right now I think 43:53 incremented you follow them up right from reports yes it was implemented and people are saying that  yes they are safety as but we don’t have quantitative data to say in a year they would have about ten accidents on this spot now its zero that evidence is not there and in most cases that’s where this feeds into the aspect where we fail to get money just imagine a few times where you’ve heard a high profile people getting accidents even along Kampala Masaka road you hear members of parliament coming up saying lets draw the road lets separate the road but the cost of doing that so it would mean if we can come up with data and see we see on this spot there used to happen accidents and last three years ten people died(hmmm)but we need only one billion these people’s lives would have been saved then it becomes very easy for someone to say eh you mean just spending this we are going to save you know this number of lives  we had outcries here we would look at one person and everyone is not about you but because of what you’ve done and I’ve just spent 100 million a I have saved number of (these lives)so it would become very easy but right now without data to defend that you say ah I think the person was drunk so data issues until we get it right then we keep guessing.
I: Okay so lastly which other stakeholders or organizations are involved in the transport of road safety sector?
R: Okay there is of course Uganda national roads authority UNRA ministry of works and transport where the national roads safety council is it there is THB transport licensing board (okay) it’s also under roads and transport uhmm which other one traffic police  under police and maybe other local authority which manage roads they are also part of it yeah.
I: Do you work with NGOs?
R: Uhmm well, I think that these what is this safe way (safe way right way) of course they work with us towards Kampala but they have a stronger relationship with national road safety council, shell, now NTV you heard those other person Twedeko it was a very good campaign Total (yes Total)so I mean all these organizations have been only that the challenge here we get is that some of the interventions are not coordinated (hmmm)so you have this one is ending with Twedekko then this other one is something similar instead of touching another certain group so to be reached is hard so the programs are not coordinated  they all compete for visibility for example you may have something that you would feel is most argent then for them they come with something different because it will give them visibility well  they also they want to be in areas where there improved road safety but also they market their project (yes definitely)they want to market them there where they don’t have clients and then…….present (definitely).
I:So I don’t know if you Stella has any(but also I don’t know how what you know about this the cost of for example maintaining road marking on the roads the signage (yes)its quit expensive that’s why you see most of our roads are not marked and yet if a road is marked someone  will really feel guilty (things are strange)strange unto some other person’s lane but it’s very expensive to mark these roads(right now there is a campaign daily monitor be in your lane its a  road safety campaign which is a very good thing because  if you’re not in your  lane like in the other point of conflicts you create worse conflicts on a road so that also a very good campaign and I think we can get more on that line not to get ashamed of whatever they are doing on the road……..Tumazze
I: Okay thank you very much now we want to request for some documents like we mentioned we are doing a desk review so we like to request for some documents on policies report regulations that. 
Date of interview	20th  March 2018	
Interviewer	xxxxxx	
Department	UNRA	
Position of respondent	xxxxxx 	
Name of Respondent 	xxxxxxxx	
Duration of interview	46 minutes	
Transcribed by	xxxxxx	
Interview setting and notes	Interview happed in an open office setting but we were quite a distance from other occupants. Interviewee was delayed by like 30 minutes but once he came in there were no interruptions. Respondent was open and outgoing and was knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter 	

Description of interview

Transcript
I: okay, I have some guiding questions let us start by building on what you have said, which programs are you currently implementing here in UNRA that specifically target road safety?
R: I think when you want to know what UNRA is doing in terms of road safety we quickly pick the five pillars I hope you know them very well. So there is safety management that is now purely under the ministry of works, national road safety council which I am glad to be a member; then pillar number two; is safer roads and safer road users I think that is three; or whatever may be four for safer vehicles and that is why you are here, post-crash response or management.
Now for us directly you can say that UNRA is on this, okay, so our structure we have traffic and road safety department here we also have traffic and road safety partners in the network planning and design, so I will use that to see, so we have this one under drip directly to road infrastructure protection but also under directorate of network planning and engineering we have element of traffic and road safety. Now this directorate of network planning  and engineering department is responsible for designs so these officers there, these  safety engineers who are there, they are to internally check on what highway engineers are doing and they ensure  the designs are complying to  safer roads, they are complying to create an enabling environment for even safer vehicles to move properly. The department that is here does three things; one is sensitization on road safety issues during construction, okay, construction works, we talk to contractors, do what, make sure you do that, two; we independently act like internal auditors on designs, you get…?
I: yes
R: so we have safety engineers so we independently audit what … network  has produced and then we give comments. Three; we carry out road safety assessments and audits no more roads that are operating, identify black spots, identify whatever, whether designs are properly done and all those things, so those are three elements of our core mandate in this directorate. 
I: so may be let us start by looking at sensitization; are there specific activities you do under sensitization?
R: we basically audit the traffic and road safety program of a particular project then when we are auditing it we also sensitize the construction teams about the importance of traffic and road safety because many tracks moving within the system you have the communities around that need to be careful because in some villages this high traffic they receive for the first time and these are new vehicles very strong with young people driving them but also we have these other earth moving equipment many people there they don’t know how they work like an excavator. So it even goes beyond traffic and road safety to operational safety for now those people working around that equipment to the communities around these particular sites and the construction so we do this in liaison with the national safety council which is purely mandated to coordinate all traffic and road safety activities.  They have not been resourced before but I see an increased resource to them I don’t know whether you have met them?
I: yes they are part of the list we shall reach out to them.
R: yeah, I am part of them so some of them things might be….
I: an overlap thank you. Then moving forward let us look at your target audience, whom do you target when you are coming up with these programs and activities?
R: like as I told you the mandate number one of sensitization it is purely on projects, these days because of the fika salaama the cry that was out there for the last one year we have been going into districts whether there are projects on not. Basically we have been spotting national road safety council  on this, so we have auctioned almost stripped the entire country but that is not our mandate, if it is not managed we can easily conflict. But purely when we go on projects our target audience are the workers, are the communities around those projects, you get; workers, communities around the project, then we also audit their safety program to see whether they are complying for the construction because we have road safety officers, traffic and road safety officers on each project that are managed by the project managers so we want to see if they promised us that this is the program are they following it? 
I: okay. 
R: then independent like internal auditors, our internal audits high way engineers you go there and see before we launch this lets walk through it you forgot this, you forgot that, have you thought about the pedestrians, have you thought about these upcoming towns something like that. 
I: okay, and to what extent have you implemented these activities you are speaking about have you implemented them partially of you are fully done with this?
R: on sensitization I told you we have been doing massive sensitization, I think now the country has been completed every visit every time we do like three days sensitization program with traffic police and the local leaders they are usually all present the RDC, then we develop an action plan we distribute it to different directories like road maintenance, those who are responsible if it was road furniture that is out if it was out and everything, then we push for the program to implement them, we see then implementing. 
Under enforcement, that is why I said the entire directory is moreless on traffic and road safety enforcement. we also have a section of road furniture protection part of the core mandate of the enforcement, you know people have been stealing these road furniture and what so we now have a rapid response unit that moves across the country we have informers and what we have been arresting people and aligning them in court with the new regulations now it is very, very primitive to destroy road furniture up to four millions actually that is the fine before you replace the furniture, the fine before you replace the furniture the fact that you tampered to touch it it’s a fine, then we assess the furniture and replace it.
I: thank you very much other than what you have told me what else is being done to make our roads safer?
R: in safer roads program of course which is purely our mandate as per our act we are acknowledge that there are three major factors as you are aware that is; the road environment, the vehicle conditions and the behavior of these road users. So, but we believe that even if users make mistakes our role is to be able to forgive them and be lenient to them that is a new concept to our highway engineers needed to understand, that is why you see many roads have deep ditches you wonder whether an engineer was involved or whether he thought about a pedestrian or a car that has got an accident.  Because this guy has made a mistake your first impression is to forgive this person you get, instead of having a deep trench here can you have and if this is the road can you make this trench like this you get, so that instead of it being deep so that even when he get off he has a safer way of overturning not to come and you can imagine what will happen to this person. But here he can if it is a vehicle he can overturn and so if his in belts now it will be much easier the damage is reduced something like that.
Also safer roads in towns, now in towns it is mandatory that all trenches are covered but you know you have your brothers who keep stealing  the covers, and you check where the new roads are, forget the old ones like in Namugongo we had covered all those most of them were broken people park on them and what! Interesting! So the cost of forgiving roads if you realize all our new roads, a pedestrian walk way is a step higher I don’t know you have seen this you find it a step higher meaning that this vehicle it is not motivated to climb this pavement by the time he climbs it he is really one of these guys who don’t even care about their vehicles, so pedestrians there it has provided for them. 
All our roads the new ones they shoulders are that at the same level with the road as opposed to the current Masaka road and you go there and you find this road and the shoulder is a step lower, now if you are at 100km/hr and you accidently you go off you want to swerve and come back chances of turning are more today they are all.. all our new roads they are what, on the same level, even before all those some used to be it was not deliberate some used to be depended on who is the controller but now it is mandatory  so that even if you get off coming back you don’t get that tumbling okay, in all our new roads now the line that separate the main road and the shoulder we make it with the technology of mico gramble scribs I don’t know whether you have heard about this when you’re about to get off wrrrrrrr 
I:  Kayunga road
R: you are covering breaks it makes it so uncomfortable, if you are about to slip off you come back, when you are about to go wrrrrrrrrrrr a normal person will never know why you did that but it was meant to protect. So you try to make the environment that even when the behavior of this driver is funny your role should be able to forgive him, alert him, interact with him both with our signages and even the road environment now, you would rather make it so bad to that worst scenario you get. So those are some of the deliberate things that we are doing now on new road reserves but also the shoulders in rural villages it is now a one point five when you check Kawempe-Kafu the shoulders is like this, very small and accidents that take place there sometime they are caused because you don’t have where to park, so now that is history, making a road and you are only seeing a vehicle on lane forget that this vehicle can get off, this vehicle can have a mechanical problem where will it park? And when it parks it stays in the road. 
But now it is one point five at least if we have one at the shoulder it will just be having enough space to park even after this the grass you try to make sure there is enough parking but also for people walking, or riding it is not deliberately like riding lane but it helps, but also we have increased the width of our roads now from three meters to three point five all the new roads now it is the standard is three point five, again when it is three meters because now vehicles are coming a little bit big it is two point six the gap remaining is like this book from another car so that when you add extra five hundred you have this gap remaining so if the other track is the other side then you have two meters in between two tracks so any small swerving is okay if you find a track parked and you do a little bit you are still safe. 
Then again our economy would allow if the economy was enough it would have allowed us do dual carriages on most of the highways but it is not possible that is why we increased the capacity of our roads using climbing lanes, you notice, you have seen them?
I: yes
R: they help a lot they increase our road capacity, so all those are safety features because you see what affect the behavior of the driver is because he wants to run very fast, if your road is inhibiting his movements any small chance he gets he zooms so if he can remove these things and by putting climbing lane then the track will go here this guy can anticipate how the road is in the next 200 kilometers he doesn’t need to rush he knows that on the next hill you will find a track it will have space here I will move, you get? That is why you see many accidents happening between Masaka and Kampala because when someone is going out of Kampala and has been in too much jam and when he gets out of jam he wants to rush to catch up or when he is coming he wants to rush because he knows he is going to be two hours in the jam.  So the new initiatives we are doing is now introduction of express highways, the one of Busega-Mpigi is going to start has just been delayed a little bit, we are doing Jinja, Kampala-Jinja we are now doing feasibility studies for Kampala-Bombo because it is another key road, Kampala-Busunju is also going to begin on the feasibility study because so that you .. if this is your  city center these are roads going out, okay, you know you have Mityana, Masaka, Jinja, you have Hoima, then you have Bombo I think these are our major arteries of course you have the Gayaza-Zirobwe road which again connects both to Kayunga here sorry, Kayunga going to Mukono okay.
I: Matuga you could..
R: also Matuga you come here so they all come from the center, this is a ring road, then you put another ring road that is how national road should work, so our first ring road is the northern bypass and southern bypass if you notice, northern by pass is now dual carriage southern bypass will be part of the Jinja express highway some part of it has been done up to Munyonyo. So why these express highways are done because in the city we are going to put fly overs, I want to connect you to how it helps safety, fly over like next year the one of Kampala to Busega will start so that when we are here and you want to go to Masaka you are not in the chaos of Bakuli what, what, you know those taxis, so you move, so if you are sure you are not going to meet jam you leave at your convenience you can respect the speed limits because you know in a few hours you will be wherever you want to go so all these are earmarked for express highways atleast up to forty kilometers our target is that you should have to achieve fifty kilometers per hour (50km/hr) from the city center up to forty kilometers.  
These days you can’t you spend hours and hours, another second ring will be you were talking of Mutungo, Seeta, Kira, Matuga, Nansana, rotating up to Kasanje then you cross the lake and come back and close the route, so even somebody who is here in Mukono and you want to go here, if you are here and then if we finish this and you want to go to Entebbe you will come to Bweyogerere take it to Kireka side go to Munyonyo you don’t have to trek to kwetolola, so if a track is leaving Jinja you don’t have to go in that jam it will shoot Kalagi pick this by the time he realizes he is towards Mpigi without knowing  whether  Kampala exists some of these things we are doing..
I: tell me about any laws that are effective in improving road safety.
R: I think apart from the traffic and road safety since 1998 is it?
I: yes 1998 act
R: we don’t have laws helping directly, I think pillar number one as a country we are still doing bad in road safety management  that is the road safety management we as a country, we have just on the cabinet we have passed the roads bill which is giving  more ..a little bit of support revising the traffic and road safety okay, that 1998 to enhance those features I think it is about to be taken to the cabinet all other things have been done the whole of this year is all those laws must be passed so that people are supported encouraging otherwise we are not doing well when it comes to enabling regulation support, and financially we are not supporting those things very well.
I: then what would you say has been the effectual term and impact of these programs and activities you have mentioned on crashes and injuries?
R: it is difficult to know the impact in terms of reductions because at the same time we are increasing the number of highways and every time you make a road good you affect the user behavior, you get, it takes time for the user behavior  to come back and, you get, generally across so we expect in fact these crashes in the next five years to ten to continue to increase as we make new, look at Bunyoro now we are adding four hundred kilometers of tarmac within Bunyoro alone and traffic will increase there. So those are increased accidents, in Karamoja we never used to have traffic accidents we are now sending there roads because many people die those guys the first road we took there that is where they sit with their seats on the road it was difficult to remove them, in the north they used to lie down there at night because it was warmer. 
So it is difficult to know but at list these initiatives we have done, like the massive sensitization we have done across the country, by the way fika salaama was part of the sensitization it was initiated by UNRA we wanted to show that because people used to say roads are bad, roads are bad, yes they are not so good as you want them but the user behavior should be aligned to the condition of the road.  When we started fika salaama today you no longer hear ‘ nga bagamba ziserela zikolaki’ now they all came to agree that actually it was user behavior not following laws, not following what so that was part of sensitization, for the first time people across the country came to know that…traffic and road safety is there  and it used before that is because fika salaama that program is still working being supported, we support the background. 
I: the background
R: those that are in lineage with the traffic police sensitization has locked we had many, many, so many complaints those are the ones that have informed some of the changes in our designs, yeah, because we bring feedback and we push and e change managing the road signs, really most of our roads the road signs most of them are broken they don’t  but now the amount of pressure that is on them and desire inside to do we have a research, research department for research we are researching on new methods of installing these road furniture to make sure they are not stolen they are useless to them. For example on northern bypass one day you come close to those things are not steel they are plastic, most of our feeder roads are for example the entire Mubende those signages are out of plastic, the one on northern bypass they would break them thinking that they are valuable so if we replace them nobody will, so those are new innovations on Hoima road I think we have concrete one, you get, you have to steal and break and get steel inside they are not directly like the mostly used so all those complaints there with feedback you get a lot of support.
I: thank you very much, you have mentioned some obstacles and challenges in implementing your programs, the vandalism of the signs, the economy that doesn’t allow dual carriage, do you know any other challenges or obstacles besides this?
R: I think our road safety in this country can be put under control I am talking now as a global and we have a good driving permit system in the entire East Africa ours is the only international one.
I:  I can testify to that, I have been when you come from Kenya to Uganda you need a stamp for you to drive here but if you go with your Ugandan one to the other side they just ..
R: it is computerized and everywhere you go, the key challenge there you know me and know where, how do we get these permits even you the owner of yours did you really go through a rigorous test ,you get, that is the biggest mistake we have good systems, good infrastructure but enforcement is poor so, challenge number one; when we did fika salaama 50% of Ugandans with permits are forged okay, one; people on the roads this is what we found out, people on the roads, who were on the wheel around 30% didn’t have permits the 70% remaining we have statistics and that was just on Masaka and Gulu road that is where we were acting by that time the entire year, the 70% with permits, 50% of them had forged ones, so the other 50% is me and you who knows that even the way we got genuine one in principles is not genuine, a genuine permit when nobody tested you no body was so strict, you bribed your way and you came to land on the job. Now if you come to learn on the job, i a wrong person is teaching you and come out as a wrong driver as well so generally it is a crisis. At renewal nobody ever does tests what is supposed to be rechecked, the eyes is supposed to take through to see whether you still remember, to an oral exam you pass or whether to an interpreter even to be re-tested, so the whole administration of the driving permits both initial and renewal it is a big problem then we don’t have demerit system, if I get you once, twice your permit should be losing value, losing value, losing value, losing value until you don’t have, so that area you find it has a crisis. 
Another area is generally as a country I think we don’t have high interest there is no tone and top the one coordinating traffic and road safety is secretary to national roads council under ministry of works so it is not one of those big offices even under the ministry, you understand, really if you are killing, one police is talking 3000 now but you know me and you if someone doesn’t die immediately on the road is not counted even if he dies three hours later we tested that during  the fika salaama activity, they would be telling you four people died but for you, you have six people died because two people died in hospital, you get and WHO thinks we are 10,000   
I: there is a discrepancy between WHO and..  
R: and between you and me the way police will call and what, the inadequacy they have WHO might be true, if you talk of their standard of femur for anybody who dies after three months is still as a result of that, how about the injured ones? but there is no serious tone from the parliament, from the cabinet and where, you get, to me that is a big challenge.  Our side where we would want to implement most of the initiatives we don’t have enough resources so you have to choose between either giving 100km of the road with basic features or you give 20km with high end features, but also enforcement our wrong users have you seen anybody respecting zebra crossing?
I: they don’t. 
R: even these new modifications they put in Kampala city for disabled people there is a button you press if it vibrates and if you are blind then you know it is clear, but look at that blind guy is anybody going to respect that, like see pedestrians walk still that is system it is cost a lot of money but still it won’t work until we hammer people seriously.
I: about that facility for the blind people, are people notified about it personally I didn’t know about it 
R: that is KCCA
I: but I also use the Kololo round up, the Kololo junction from the airstrip I realize there if you are coming from the other side you can’t make a turn going down I saw it I think yesterday but one
R: showing you what? 
I: when I saw a car almost ramming into the other then I had to look up and wonder who like designed this and saw guys are not allowed to go down but they go down every day.  So is there sensitization? 
R: but you see now with our stubborn people it is now engineers if the road is open and you don’t want them to go down people won’t see those signs, so what system do you put here to mechanically to make it not a conducive thing, you get, I don’t know, are you going to come and maybe bring a lane like this and make this when somebody is turning this side you know, something can be …in countries like this one the engineers have to see in a different perspective how do you make it by the time you even turn and everybody laughs at you, you get, I don’t know whether you have seen some of the features where do we have that is it Bukoto maybe it is that junction from .. the way they did those slip lines and what, you know they put some slip lanes and that ease traffic so it is difficult to be in this lane the thing is this it is entering this road and you come here and you want to do this 
I: so it will feel awkward? 
R: even it won’t even come but here at Kololo it is I myself I think I can make that mistake I don’t think I have ever noticed that saying don’t turn, you get, so in addition to people not following those lanes there are some road barriers we need to .. you can imagine when you go to Kalerwe by just putting that ki thing in the middle it eased traffic but if you don’t put it people will not follow your lines, they will do this, do this, do this the jam will be too much now the jam will be on one side or where it is supposed to be the other side will be zooming. So some of those small small things.
I: so you have mentioned some suggestion anymore suggestions on how to deal with these obstacles for instance we may start with the issue…
R: of course another challenge is in pillar number five again that is lack of the tone from top I know that when you want to secure some ambulance for the regional hospitals which are along the road but really is there a reason why we can’t have an ambulance for every 100km to start with from here to Kabale they are only four so within if you buy 40 ambulances purely with paramedics, you get and really if jobs are still few paramedics can also be given a chance to educate about safety such that they are kept busy because if I have 100km here this point A, point B, there is point C so if an accident happens here like the way Uber works this traffic police should be able to sense which ambulance is nearby, either this ambulance will be here, or will be here, but it will be in between but travelling 50km an ambulance no jam because you can always have free calls within few minutes you can rescue rather than putting a person on that pickup and you kill completely, are those traffic men taught how to handle bodies I mean even people who are about to die, how many people dying because of the handling, so it is a lack of.. again we have that.
I: how can we deal with this interest on road safety, how can we..?
R: that is what we are doing we have increased sensitization internally that is for the first time, my directorate is new I am the first director since UNRA started –it is a two year old directorate and all our programs are apart from ferries they are purely to support like overloaded tracks are the biggest cause of accidents, that is another program we are doing. We have controlled there is still too much corruption but we have increased, we have now moved from weighing 200,000 vehicles per year to now 1.2 million vehicles per year and we have now increased even regulation so if vehicles are not heavily loaded then you reduce traffic and road safety. I give you an example, between Lukaya and Kampala from January to mid Feb we got 30 accidents as a result of those small fighter tracks for carrying sand just that and some of them were involving fatalities. Now reason those bu tracks are supposed to carry 8 tons both a track and the content it is supposed to be 8 tons but they were modified they now carry 17 tons so this track doesn’t have chassis to handle this, the steering axle cannot this load the guy is basically suffering any ka small thing down, some of them break down all of a suddenly in the middle of the road and vehicles come and ram into them. So by now controlling this these tracks will either get out of that road or they will comply and you can still reduce out of 20 or 30 that happened may be only 5 will happen, so those initiative they are silent you never see them directly as traffic and road safety but it is. People that have died because of heavy tracks that all of a sudden break down on the road are many in the last four years I have four relatives that have died by ramming into those tracks, so that is another initiative that we are doing, control overloading you manage.
I: okay, now let us focus on pedestrian you mentioned some interventions like the pedestrian lane is a step higher, zebra crossings, do you have any other pedestrian specific interventions that you are working on?
R: basically it is to make pedestrian walk ways as much as possible you avoid that interaction between the pedestrian and the drive carriage by raising them higher, covering as I told you the drains in urban centers where we have high traffic is another interventions too to support pedestrian because they push them into these drains and that is a push we are trying to at least that in urban centers all the new roads where ever you find those activities drains are getting covered that is a must.
And in urban centers the shoulder increases now to 2 meters, you get, yeah, then also in urban centers where we get space some of them were built wrongly where we get space we separate the traffic that is going through from the traffic that is just stopping within the city, by if this is a highway we also put a lane on the side to distribute the what .. so the tracks this lane you will never find tracks stopping there, you go to Kabale I don’t know whether you have been there of recent 
I: sometime back
R: when
I: that is over 2 years
R: you may not appreciate that today if you go there we even have bicycle lanes.
I: ooh great!
R: pedestrian walk ways are separate and they have put stoppers to make sure a vehicle cannot enter it where they got space and these lanes for they are separate they are also going to do it in Gulu we have done it is very interesting yeah, so those are part of the initiatives, then all the new roads in the last years that have been designed others you haven’t seen them they still on paper looking for funds.  
I: then as we come to the end what informed the decisions to come up with the interventions you are making targeting pedestrians?
R: one I think you are aware that last year alone 40% of the people that died were non vehicle occupants they were pedestrians and another 35% were motor cycle list and boda bodas and what all those we can easily cluster them into a step higher of what of pedestrians so this percentage if you use the palatal rule 80, 20, or something really this 40% if you can save it then you kill less people that is 1200 you can save them.
I: then have you been able to find out the impact of these interventions like the one you did in Kabale on the pedestrians? 
R: not yet because the last time I went there, the impacts are there because you see them in but people are still mixed in traffic they haven’t appreciated and they are even telling us to go and sensitize them on how to use can you imagine, yes so it is about continuous sensitization so the impact is not yet measured I am sure many people have felt safe, it has saved them, I am yet to talk to the traffic and see whether accidents have reduce but even it is a small section anyway.
I: okay, then tell us about any challenges in the implementation of your pedestrian targeted interventions.
R: the challenge as I told you if we don’t have enough funding there are some things that will not be done, these ones I have told you they are now funding is not an issue it is part of now the concept you cannot and nobody will even pass the exam when you don’t have them anyway. 
I: then as we conclude what other stake holders or agencies or organizations do you know that are involved in transport and road safety sector that you work with?
R: we work with ministry of works and transport, the national road safety council so I am on the board of course representing UNRA, we have right ways, what?
I: safe way
R: yeah we interact a lot then we have the traffic police we share reports they keep giving us briefs, we are even on whatsapp together to see what is happening on a daily basis and where possible we support them, there are NGOs that have kept coming and wanting to patnerer with us some of them we use them in our new construction we give them contracts to go and sensitize people, yeah.
I: thank you very much how could we access these documents and
R: like which ones now
I: like guidelines that you are now using that cater for pedestrians.
R: it is part of the.. they used to be there, it is with the ministry manual, the road designs people used to just.. if you ask for the manual on road designs.
I: okay
R: sometimes people used not to mind about them, the last version is 2010, so when you go to ministry of works they can as well look into that
I: okay, thank you very much we have come to the end of this lengthy interview. 
R: welcome.
I: but I must say usually I have dissemination sessions where we invite various stake holders to come and listen in to the preliminary reports.

……………………………………………….END…………………………………….
Date of interview	28.03.2018	
Interviewer	xxxxxx	
Department and Organization	Road Safety Initiative 	
Position of respondent	xxxxxxx	
Name of Respondent 	
xxxxxx	
Duration of interview	44.24 minutes	
Transcribed by	xxxxxx	
Setting of interview:
The interview was conducted at the TRIAD board room and we started at 11:00am. In the interview we had a note taker, interviewer and the respondent. 
 [yes please] what type of road safety activities is the road safety initiative involved in?
R:For us mainly we are  involved in to inform the public inform and educate that is what we mainly do and advocacy yeah we just so that we can help the government  to improve on the safety measures that is exactly what we do any way we have several groups for example there motorcyclist those are people who are so vulnerable then there is a pedal cyclists then we have grouped them like that and the drivers conductors, passengers, bus drivers then pedestrians and road safety for schools [okay]yes please.
I: So in informing advocacy being clear but then how do you inform and educate these groups?
R: Mainly what we do we inform them using the media the social media we have CDs dramas at schools and also T-shirts and many other ways of doing it in fact let me check here because I cannot memorize everything at a go those are mainly what we do okay I have got you know these ones there so many ways it could be publishing and distribution of training manual also(you also do that)sorry [do you also do that]yeah I do that I publish and do that then TV clips we take them to UNRA and they have they show them for them at least they pay us some money.
I: So you make a clips for UNRA?
R:Clips yes some clips and they pay us [okay] then we have radio programs then we have participants learning [how is that] that one we get groups in fact if you had connected this one I would show you but we go to some places  for example we get motorcyclists then we invite a traffic and address those people.
I: Okay so you talked about use of social media and so which form of social media are you using?
R: We use Facebook twitter and Facebook, twitter and then the website as you can see.
I: Okay so and this media has been able to reach motorcyclists pedal cyclists, pedestrians bus drivers and conductors [and then in schools organize quiz] okay so schools you have quizzes and drama?
R: Yes we have to organize quiz.
I: So do you, have you evaluated your activities so far?
R:In fact yes because for example with this advocacy we advise the government everything’s on the website we are not creating it now and I have letters here that I communicated to them about checking vehicles and that one has been successful they are checking vehicles  as you can see they have built stations here and there but our advice was not that they build because those ones will not be enough so we had advised them that they use licensed garages and then out of these licensed garages would be able to check the vehicles yeah that is how we had done but it would be regularly that at least  in three or four months that is how they should be checking them but now that they have decided to do it themselves it cannot work because the volume of vehicles is very big they cannot it cannot finish there so many vehicles so if they had used these private garages and then they register them by the ministry of transport that would work and the restriction would be that these people the licensed these garages would at least be reliable to some liability should a vehicle for example be involved in an accident then the certifying garage would partly be (responsible)responsible for example by 20 or 10percent whichever they would decide so that these people would not certify vehicles if they are really faulty but the government definitely with this corruption  of the country they will still certify them even when they are faulty  because they are partly reliable.
I: Yes so that is about evaluating the advocacy [yes] how about the information and the education have you had any evaluations do you have a systems in place to evaluate?
R: Yeah now what we do especially in fact in schools but this one is not very effective because we have to go to some places to meet people at our own expenses as you know with NGOs we don’t get any funds from the government but we do it through the social media and according to our website we already have some one million plus visitors so we think that it is working because that is how we can evaluate this the social communication using the internet [okay] that is how we have more than one million here.
I: So what about my cousin who might be in the village and maybe you went and had a quiz or [yes]a drama is there a way you evaluate those others beyond internet?
R: Yes people get these people get you find that there is some at least there is some little change because for example in the villages when you take there videos, videos attract them and those video clips they get interested and know that there is a problem because we show them accident scenes and how we can avoid such situations that’s how they get but as I tell you the best thing the government can do is first of all to update the highway code hmmm the highway code are the rules governing the use of public roads but as you see the highway code of Uganda is you see this pamphlet here I call it a pamphlet this is nothing the highway code is a big volume and I have already we have drafted a highway code for this country which is relative to that one of the UK because the highway code in Uganda was emulated from the united kingdom I happened to live there for sometimes I went for  IHE and during my study I managed to do some course in urban traffic congestion management and road safety for them the way they handle things is very different for example in this country we be having what we call first of all theory I have the CDs which I will show you maybe then after that one will be having hazard perception everything is learnt on  computer first of all before you get on the road for the first time so and widening the road you have to be with someone of experience for at least two years when you are driving with him so that he can advise you as you gain experience also but drivers in this country they just learn on job that is what they do you will find a conductor who has been in the vehicle you reach somewhere someone gets on that one of course you can’t know because you won’t ask  you need to ask them for licenses but they learn on jobs.
I: Yes so these materials are they road safety initiative designed or?
R: No these are tests we sit in the UK I did a test in the United Kingdom [ooh] yeah but we as I told you that I mean the Highway Code for Uganda was emulated from the United Kingdom and that is exactly what it is but it has not been updated all the road designs and vehicle types have improved these people have remained there and it’s not difficult even drafting a highway code by the way because it’s a question and even removing a few items for example ice which we don’t have here and we replace with mud and then we take to the parliament to legislate the laws as simple as that.
I:Thank you for what you said so ohm we’ve seen the activities mainly information informing and educating and then advocacy so how is your coverage around the country do you cover the entire country do you have specific areas that you see as hot spots?
R: What we do we get friends who are also interested as you know we are not getting money from anywhere friends who are interested upcountry here and there that is how we operate and then we have the website as the resource where they can get information pass onto others that is our work?
I: So but then if you look at the outreaches the quizzes still on the conductors and drivers which parts of the country have you handled so far?
R:For example Mbale, Mbale Soroti not so much as you know we are hindered as I tell you maybe just here  Gayaza, Kampala here and so on but we use personal resources so we use people who are personally also interested but we have the website has a resource of information where you can disseminate uniform information to the public that is how we do it we get friends but the best thing as I tell you whatever we are doing here it is not effective even what we are doing now I tell you unless the highway code is updated that is one, two the system this manual system of xxxx will not work[manual system contract]man power this man power enforcement method cannot work why because if you have  used a taxi here you will find that you will reach somewhere these drivers will tell you that they are traffic men there so  they will do the right thing when the traffic men are not there they will not obey so they will drive recklessly competitive driving is the source of roads accidents you know competitive no one cares about the others one wants to pass and so on so the best thing to do is to change the method from the traditional enforcement method to modern digital I showed them we can fix cameras on buses can get a wider view we can fix cameras on motorcycles we can fix cameras on Ambulances because for them sometimes they drive on the right then cameras on police vehicles and some private vehicles how the government may say they don’t have money but the community can come in to buy these cameras as business such that any person that is implicated will they will share the money maybe 30percent to the public or one holding the camera and 70percent to the government that is how it can be done and the data that is collected from these CCTVs we call them as CCTVs it goes straight away to the monitoring team maybe it doesn’t stay here in the vehicle such that this person is a risk free these ones act as just  CCTVs but the information is sent for example here even if we are seated in Gayaza there or here would still be monitoring the whole country and then you get clips out of these videos your capturing on the roads you send traffic information for example weekly to those concerned you default the DIDs at such a statement these cameras have they have GPS global positioning system now you know exactly the point  where that person was and whatever he did that one will eradicate this question of for example parking on pavements and of course that one hinders the vulnerable people you find someone part of the pavements and a vulnerable person with the wheel chair cannot even pass he has to risk his life into the road and yet those cameras would work because they are mobile they are not fixed there is other cameras they are fixing here cannot work why, because they know once there is a camera someone will obey the law people in this country don’t fear the law they fear loses.
I: So actually you quite number of interesting things but beyond the cameras and small surveillance improving surveillance what else do you in your view as someone who has been in the safety work and that will be for some time think that can be done to improve the safety on our roads.
R: Now your very right it’s a big question in last year when we had that was 2007 I will give you this copy in fact because I had not pointed it as I told you the first thing they would do one is to introduce I’ll give you a copy about this one don’t worry about it, is to introduce road safety in schools, road safety in schools as a subject to maximize awareness that awareness will not only help school children but also the parents because a child will at least come from school go back and inform the parent of what they want and while on the road the parent will not force this child to do this the child will say no we were taught this at school it will help even little kids for example we have written a book even for nursery [okay] even for nursery this road safety education is a very wide subject and it goes up to university level because that is where we have even for example what we call eco driving eco driving is a way of driving in a manner that you will drive like you’re driving a train you start slowly and then break slowly there you do not affect the environment so you will use even less fuel and the fuel you use is fully burnt but this harsh acceleration you cannot burn all the fuel and you will affect the comfort of your passengers now again as I said you have to update the highway ode [okay]that one is mandatory if they don’t do it we are wasting time because there is no way you will handle someone that you have misbehaved when there is no law to that effect then introduce approved driving instructor’s board to care for examine and license driver instructors without that everyone is an instructor I can I move in town here then you find someone holding like  this a file the instructor is there like this no you don’t handle a steering in case like this a steering is handled 10 -2 10minutes  to 2  for example the way you hold your steering so that your able to maneuver safely but when you’re holding this your arms are held here in case of danger you cannot move but you find there an instructor and he calls himself an instructor.
I: Is that because I think in the act they say an instructor should be someone who has I think like silence?
R: Yeah there has to be a silence but every driver here even a learner can will also teach another and yet when there is a law anyone found doing such things will definitely be arrested instantly because you do not have the experience to teach another for example you can see what is happening with teachers , teachers they want them to do an examinations again now what about a driver who is taking one person your carrying 14people or 90 in a bus and your putting these people at a risk [okay you mentioned]now again what we do yes please [no you can] now again to introduce citizens a computerized theory and hazard perception I will show these ones I will show you how it works [hmmm]so that someone is conversant with the situation on the road hazards come in and how you can do everything possible to prevent a crush these ones can be done nationwide not just by CDs but this CD even if you did 10times it will give you different questions you won’t get the same questions all the time that means that you have to be conversant with the highway code  so then we introduce online driver information and avail it free for employers to check if a driver is legally fit to drive the class of vehicles they can drive and then any penalties and all disqualifications you see people here give their vehicles to others vehicles of course even a bicycles is a vehicle even a motorcycle is a vehicle but these motorcycles especially are driven by people not having driving permits having a driving permit well is legal but does not mean that whoever has a driving permit is fit to drive no these driving permits are just bribed here but once you have a driving permit and it is online and people know that yes this one has a driving permit then you are compelled to these rules of the road which is a highway code that you were taught would do and therefore when you make such mistakes or reckless driving then you have to pay and the funds will be heavy because as  I tell you I was in UK sometime but people abandoned vehicles without a permit if you want a free vehicle you get it with papers there on the vehicle because the fines are high someone instead of paying those fines will say let me just leave the vehicle and these people like KCCA here would simply come crush the such vehicles and take back for recycling and the powerful vehicle by the way so this is what we should be doing in this country if we want really to improve road safeties.
I: So thank you for these .
R:in fact these ones I heard then they said that these random brief test this one will be increased so that these drugs and so on and drunkard drive is reduced and then they would tighten the express key this one of paying there and then skim to violators  and deduct points and road disqualifying violators from driving until they will do a test [okay] because we have these people we hear you find that someone has killed someone for example through reckless driving but when if you have used the taxes sometime you’ll find that they get boxes then seal the drug is there in a carbine like in the euro plane  driving passengers  behind because he doesn’t want to be identified he must have caused trouble somewhere but in such instances for example if a vehicle has caused trouble for example if someone has killed someone on the road then such a vehicle would be mandatory be ceased  by the government and be sold back to shop not just to continue messing peoples life these are machines which can be made life cannot be made you see and then it is about the garages I think I had told you that they introduce certified mechanic garages are licensed  by the ministry of transport to regularly me at least four or three months like that to certify that vehicles are safe for transportation need repair maintenance or out of category I mean out of service category then the main thing in Kampala here in fact what should be done as a short cut to reduce deaths in Kampala here and I have already talked to these people here that introduce on road surface restriction markings this is what will help in year faze let me show you many of these I’ve written to these people but I tell you they turn a deaf ear and what am telling you here is what we advise them that this SDG you see on road service restriction markings you must do something with these ones here for example a junction box I think your aware of this one now for example someone  would know that yes here someone for example this one here that the driver of the red the car is waiting the junction box to turn red this is not the exit is not clear the driver  drives actually the automatic form for example he is waiting here he wants to turn this way and yet where he is going is full which means he is going to occupy this space and vehicles from here will not move you can say that what is happening in Uganda here this is what people do congestion is here and yet once this place is kept clear even the vulnerable the disabled and so on will be able to cross but they cannot cross because there is what I call traffic mess there is no traffic management in Kampala when I talked to Jacob of KCCA  and I said this is a traffic mess he was saddened because he’s the one handling this situation but everything is a traffic mess now this one would generate a hail of money these the money they are getting for example in form of bribes would be a revenue source to the government  in UK you find that only one junction box generates around 2million pounds  a year, 2million is big money here in Kampala and how many junctions do we have in Kampala here they are so many now take nationwide so this what would be doing is to create a revenue source for the government and this is what the president is interested in but it is an uphell task to have it through because individuals are benefiting from this system here and then there also the cub restriction markings where even a vulnerable can park where someone else cannot park where there is parking and where there is no stopping even all those signs are there now and then they would also introduce this would help people be safe as you know most accidents are associated with the volume of traffic when there is that chaos that chaos that is when people are knocked but once everything is streamlined then you will find that there will be less accidents.
I: Yes thank you for this ancient full discussion so in your view Uganda as it is today have there been any successful policies or interventions that you feel have sort of improved safety on our roads ease?
R:In my opinion I maybe when I talk at international level am not an international but am talking at the international level comparatively Uganda has no road safety [what is the background of that now using the international skills]yes that for example in the UK out of 1000000 vehicles you will find that two people are knocked or crushed out of 100000 but in Uganda you will get about 40 you can see that comparative   when you compare there is no road safety in fact Uganda was ranked second in Africa so you cannot be ranked second in the whole of Africa and think that you’re are safe in fact.
I: So what policies do you think or laws do you need to be if any do you think need to be?
R:Yes the laws as I told you the highway code are the laws or the rules that govern the use of public roads one, two they have to change the enforcement method from the traditional man power system to digital because digital is not corruptible this traditional method is corruptible those are the principles two, and then the third one in fact what they can start with is to mark roads on road surfaces restriction markings why because when someone is driving and the concentration is on the road because any signs on the road then that will it is safer than someone driving while looking  from sides and the sides when I show you some clips here you find that there signs where they are fixed in Kampala here these road signs at the sides but people will still continue with the activities for example parking, in Kikubo here you’ll find people loading from there you’ll find near Mini price Bodabodas are in junctions and yet for example parking is restricted from a junction 10miters away but they are there and they are operating you find KCCA themselves they put these sign posts at for me we are from Gayaza side there at Gayaza road but I’ve seen big signs KCCA no stopping they occupy the road width by a full line a line that is mad for example four vehicles is reduced to three even or  two now that kind of mess you can’t I don’t think there is road safety in Uganda and even me when am moving on road here I have to make sure I look both sides before I cross in the UK you can look only one side knowing that the vehicle is following this side you cross the other side you know it is following from this side in Uganda if you don’t look on the either sides you’re in danger.
I: Okay thank you so that was road safety in general [yes please] but now we want to go more specific on a pedestrian and from the interventions that road safety initiative is doing you talked about informing and educating but also advocacy [yes advocacy mainly because we believe that once the laws are changed everything will be streamlined] so uhmm what interventions pedestrians specific do you have or are you implementing as road safety initiative Uganda pedestrians specifically?
R: Pedestrians mainly we educate them maybe on for example first Aid that is the little bit we can do mainly as an intervention to help them first Aid.[Okay]yeah but the source you see in my opinion as I already suggested to you, let us look at this matter to do it fundamentally and fundamentally as I have told you unless the laws change nothing will change we shall be wasting time and I will ask you five years later because I have presented these things to the government before I have letters and I will show you but they don’t implement why they benefit from the corruptible system so the best thing to do is compile your report  which is a good thing we are doing let us take it to the parliament but even if we take to these officers xxx  I have written  them letters this I have written also to the national road safety council these ones of KCCA madam xxxxx here I’ve written to her the xxx ministry of transport I’ve written to them the minister for Kampala but it will not work you will reach somewhere they will tell you how does it earn you that is what they tell you compile the report we take it to the parliament.
I:So okay thank you so you’ve mentioned that the main thing you do is first Aid so then [ first Aid for us]first Aid training [yes we prepare clips and then put them on the website somewhere there because maybe I have not seen them but clips are there on the website and then we send these links through social media and then people check them because we believe that many people now have smart phones]okay so one would ask that out of the so much that could be done to ensure my safety as a pedestrian being promoted by new road safety initiative Uganda you chose first Aid [yes]why, why first Aid?
R:This First Aid because the foundation of let me say the foundation of knowledge or the resource that the government would restrict road users and that is the highway code is not effective so what we do is treating the sickness  not preventing the sickness [so as road safety initiative]because you try to prevent it doesn’t work in fact you move in a taxi you say someone is driving tyro gating,  tyro gating it is driving bumper to bumper you say  what are you doing your risking you say you think I’ve driven for ten years are you a better driver than me so when there because there no laws.
I: So yes in finally sitting with first Aid training on over the website and social media were there any other interventions that you perhaps considered but due to one reason or another dropped it and focused on first Aid?
R:There is of course this safety belt then discipline follow the discipline always wear helmet those ones you meet drivers I mean motorcyclist as I told you don’t over speed be alert.
I: I mean targeting me a pedestrian who has to walk every day from wherever to this place?
R: That one as I told you we only use the media that’s how we can get them but it is very difficult to get for example people and say we want to talk to you about this except that when we have meetings in our place we talk to them we have meetings for example village meetings, LC meetings like that then we can talk to them but we can’t call people the public that you come and I tell you this except video clips those ones would attract them.
 I: So can you tell me more about the village meetings?
R:Yes village meetings for example I was elected, I was elected  by the community then to fundraise some money for construction of the police post so I took advantage on that one and I got numbers of the community and whoever has a smart phone reveal that number and send the link please visit our website then I request them also to forward to friends so I managed to raise the money and I constructed the police post so I got about 2000 contacts of people even some who did not contribute but I used that one and I also spread like that ,yeah that is how you can get some contacts and some emails then when they write to you  also spread you increase the impact like that (okay)yes.
I: So have you tried to find out what the impact of this first Aid training has been from the website?
R:It is not very easy to establish but in my opinion I normally see from the visitor figures in the counter there [I think they sign the one that has visited our website thank you for]now when you see such a turn over and you see also communication from the community there many organizations that invite us as you have done and that one you know that there is some improvement because if there was no improvement when I told some people here for example in our place there now when am conversing with friends who are not conversant with IHK but where do they get you to call you, you see but we have a website a website can spread information faster than simply moving door to door.
I: Yes so in an interaction right from the start you’ve mentioned some challenges like people not seeing the relevance of the work you’re doing and blockages from one two individuals here and there what other challenges are you facing in trying to implement pedestrians safety interventions that are actually making you focus more on one thing and not the other or do things this way not?
R:What we are doing in fact we are constrained with funds because if we had funds we could have gone for example to ride more frequently but we don’t have the money when we reach these people on radios they demand money now when we get the little resources and give them they say for example here you’ll find New vision writing for us but yet we send the emails and do what but they start writing you bring some little money so out of these little contributions we make you find that we get also constrained because even on same word how do we earn from it what do I get but as I told you we have written to these people you this one is a minister so there is executive director all these people we have written to them xxxxx I had known him by the way before because I was with him in Mbale when he was a police commander and I sold to him two vehicles so I know him better so when and he also sold to me a house and……
I: So in doing this work, this is my last question for what other stakeholders have you worked with or you’re currently working with?
R: In fact stakeholders in we are working with there is this NGO this global alliance and also road safety we are members there [okay] and then of course KCCA as you see then the police the public and there is UNRA we give them clips then national road safety council red cross we talked to them maybe those ones and the public. 
I: Do you have any policy documents or timelines that you as road security of Uganda have drafted or are basing on to do your work that might not be public and organization specific?
R:For us everything is transparent in fact we because we believe that this is public work and for us we don’t hide anything whatever we do we just put on website after all we are not looking for money to do this work so everything is just transparent so as I maybe to add on this one is that of course with traffic lights they have to put these to introduce a system that can stop lights from working for example in the morning you find that light may take longer I mean to take a shorter time for equal intervals those traffic lights are not like that they should put sensors to time a longer que so that it is switched on and also to establish these what I call to introduce vehicles by public workshop for contracted companies people in fear to make loses as I told you Ugandans don’t fear the law but loses.
I: Thank you very much so for any documents we could go to your website if any (sorry) for any website for any document?
R: Yes document even HIV we have also written about HIV.
I: I saw something like drafting inter curriculum educating pupils in primary one to primary four about road safety do you have any guideline on it or report or anything?
R: That one is it helps especially what we do as I told you we print pamphlet and then you give especially to some schools we also got a letter from KCCA here and then we have to go to different schools then we give them one copy and then we tell them to photocopy more and then [ what guidelines do you use to come up with that]to come up with this one here(yes with that material  learning material)the learning material as I told you I was educating this one here so we also make research and as I know that the highway code in Uganda is emulated from Britain and most of my information whatever I do I base on UK even the laws governing this country are from the UK so that is what I normally do.
I: Thank you very much.  
Date of interview	19.03.2018	
Interviewer	xxxxxxxx	
Department	Traffic and Road Safety	
Organization	Uganda National Police	
Position of respondent	xxxxxxx	
Name of Respondent 	xxxxxx
	
Duration of interview	35 minutes	
Transcribed by	xxxxxxx	
Setting of the interview:
The interview started at 9:00am and the respondent gave us only 20 minutes to conduct the interview since he was headed for another meeting. During the interview, we were interrupted twice, but he requested the officers to wait for him to complete the interview. In the room we had a note taker, an interviewer and the respondent.
I: Okay then who are your target population in all these activities?
R: Motorists and other road users because actually when we are enforcing we are enforcing on motorists, motorists mainly and include riders but we are also looking at pedestrians and other road users they maybe not pedestrians at that time for instance if we have road side markets so those people who are doing their merchandise at road side markets as their business are road users so we project motorists and road users, road users take many forms pedestrians, school children anybody who uses the road is a road user[okay] but the general statement could be road users because road users also include motorists.
I: Okay and which are the target areas for all these road users and motorists?
R: All according to the law we target public roads [okay] here anything that takes place on the public road as far as road safety is concerned [okay] we go there we don’t target for instance if a car crush occurs in your farm as long as it is a public road we don’t, we don’t investigate it, actually that one is investigated by CID so we target any activity on high ways and roads as long as they are public.
I: Okay thank you very much [not personal] okay [yeah] then moving on are there any monitoring and evaluation systems in place on the regulations you do enforcement?
R: You know when we are doing that there should be another person to monitor our activity, to evaluate we do it but it would be better for an external factor to do it for us but we do it you know we have structures we have stations, we have districts we have regions and headquarters so the work of headquarters where I sit  among others is to monitor and evaluate for instance every week I get a summary of fatalities that have taken place in the country I find it first thing in the morning and now we assess critically whether there is an increase or decrease whether some districts and regions are persistently recording fatalities and we take action like I have already instructed my deputy to find out why Bukkedi that is Tororo that area, greater Masaka, Lira and Mbarara are persistently recording many fatalities compared and Kampala north where there is Kawempe and Wandegeya going that side, because others are on the decline but these are persistently almost at the same level irrespective of the intervention so one way of monitoring is finding out  what are these accidents major actually majority are Bodaboda related ,so if they are Bodaboda related our effort should be geared in these areas on Bodaboda like in Moroto it might not be a Bodaboda issue it might be something else like NGOs vehicles so when we are to put plans we put plans in accordance with what per takes those different problems. Masaka highway may not be Bodaboda but Albertine is Bodaboda and actually Albertine has been leading in accidents per week but now it is not there because of our intervention we told them do ABC we scientifically analyzed the causes the what, and I have seen now Albertine for the last two weeks is not among the one so that is one of the monitoring and evaluation it does not mean that you must be in the field everyday to see what happens but you can be in the field by remote control by getting statistics by getting Newspaper reports by we deploy also informers, we have our informers if I have my informers I know what takes place and one of why we deploy such people is also to look at our professionalism and those how our policemen  perform then yeah headquarter level and regional, regional I told you we have stations like Buwama is a police station,Kamengo is a police station, Mpigi takes them it is the district there is a OC then there small OCs there, so the work of the OC at the station the big district is also to see what takes place then there is a regional  traffic commander actually the work of regional traffic officer is to coordinate, to monitor, to evaluate, give directives before we come in.
I:Then looking at you mentioned you have also external persons who can help you evaluate, could you tell us more on that?
R: Yeah external of course we pattern like for instance the work of RDC in the region or a district is to monitor government programs and government  programs include traffic if there police men who are not doing their work to the interfering of they are corrupt we monitor through them, we monitor there NGO we work with closely to safe way right way we don’t have many NGOs in Uganda that support us I think it is the only one [okay]and unlike other countries where you get many so they also tell us what is because they are in the field also not all throughout the country but specific roads  the media is one source of information other agencies like UNRA yeah.
I: Okay thank you very much moving on, other than what you have told me what else is being done to make Ugandan roads safer.
R: From which type of view.
I: From the police point of view. 
R:Hmmm enhancing our efforts you know road safety is shared responsibility and ours is enforcement but your enforcing which environment like these Bodabodas so we are enhancing our efforts we are targeting dark spots that’s why actually we are no longer in the news like we used to be in the news all the time you know when an accident is in Uganda the papers are competing for stories but at least now you can take a week without having desire pictures on NTV, Bukkedde sometimes they tell  lies especially when it comes to victims whereas like yesterday there was a Bus which there was a lot of water at Nile bridge and the Bus lost control there was one person who was slightly injured, slight but some papers are reporting “Bawedekko”( meaning they have all died) ha-ha such negative stories so we are enhancing we are actually now like I talk now we have given this month beginning Saturday beginning Friday,  Friday last week for thirty days massive awareness campaigns for Bodaboda riders, actually we are scaling down on our operations for one month we are not stopping  scaling down and they complain this is not our work we don’t our work is not to educate any motorists but we come in because there is some agencies which are not doing their work. And we are at the advantage we have structures national road council is not only having an office in Kampala here we have an office we are in Kisoro we are in we can go there easily using our structures so we are educating motorists on TV on Radios, workshops.
I: Okay then tell me more about how you are targeting these black spots?
R:Black spots I don’t know what do you mean by black spot[you mentioned]me I call it a dark spot or are you because you are black,[thank you for the correction]okay you can go but anyway the better name should be dark [dark] why black why not white spot these whites they  normally under rate us black spots or dark spots  there is a definition a UN definition a UN definition that any I don’t know you will go and cross check [yeah I will go and cross check the definition]Google what is a black spot I think any place where three accidents occur they go internationally classified same place three does not mean that it must be fatal, but here accidents may  be a hundreds and no measures are put in place so for us when we are identifying black spots or dark spots we deploy near like to “Fica salama”  it was our baby who, people accuse us why do you put a check point in the corner  we try to take note of that because we can’t because where we put check points it should be a hundred meters away such that somebody can be able to see you so we dominate we dominate with dark spots like butter butter in Namasubwa there used not to be police station I opened a traffic office there purposely to deploy there, there used not to be any police at Kisubi, Kisubi is a dark spot I opened a police , we do Kawunyemu we do speed Bayitta ababiri all those that is involved on Mabira I opened it there used to be no traffic, we dominate we also alert UNRA to write, they have not done anything that one I can tell you, but KCC  has for instance Game, game every day  would get like three accidents you know where Game is [yes]but even before they had put the traffic lights they had put measures to address, and you would spend a month without an accident  like Rambo strips what we call  speed coalmining  measures, humps, widening, enlarging the roads it assisted to reduce fatalities and crushes.
I: Okay then on enhancing the efforts in enforcement you could also try to tell us more on that?
R: The enhancing is selecting the educated personnel to do the good work for instance if you see what is happening since we started Fica Salama if there was no Fica Salama I think we would be getting too many  people dying on our roads if for instance your to drive at a speed on Gulu road your likely to be arrested I monitor what takes place on every road on what’s app group because we have many speed guards they are not many but they are, they can do some work that is one of the areas we have loaded for more resources, we are not yet getting them because ordinarily every police man on high way should be mobile at least a motorcycle we are, we are working with we have a unit  to go integrated highway it’s not traffic but it is under traffic for rapid response for emergencies robberies and what so when an accident happens at least there is a patrol which can respond, there is those dark spots I have talked about we have ambulances, fire attenders on strategic area such that evacuation of victims of responding victims is not very difficult so those are some of the areas we are retraining training and retraining traffic officers such that they can keep abreast with modern traffic management skills like tomorrow today they are voting for a two weeks street all commanders I mean thirty commanders who have not done any induction course all most of Kampala are going to Kabarye to Bwebajja for  fourteen days, and we shall call upon the experts some are from you like first Aid we don’t we get what is this NGO [red cross] red cross or they normally go and teach insurance we shall call upon you to go and give a lecture hmmm.
I: Okay then do you know of any laws that have been effected in improving road safety you mentioned the traffic and road safety ACT?
R:With its regulations[yes]you know the ACT creates its regulations they are many they are about 20regulations, those regulations keep on coming like the ACT didn’t  talk about phone those mobile use of mobile because at that time it was not a problem but the ACT gives the minister responsible for transport powers to make regulations like KCC has made  regulations which is about to be it is with the minister on trucks accessing the city on small like  trucks going to Bugolobi they  damage bridges, currently we don’t have any law but there is a law coming so there many regulations and sincerely we use the regulations of the traffic and road safety ACT  we don’t use international regulations although they are trying to harmonize the east African region because sometimes they don’t rime like the speed in Rwanda is different from Uganda maximum and minimum when the vehicles are calibrated with speed guards the other side they get problems when they reach here where we have no law  but they are trying to harmonize. 
I:Then other than the previous activities is there any other program you may think of that is in the pipeline or that you’re doing on improving road safety other than what you mentioned Fika salama the awareness?
R:Yeah your aware of the governments initiative to introducing cameras we believe we should also be modern to manage the traffic especially in the city[ give me five minutes we are concluding with these guys of  Makerere five]so when we get cameras I think we shall scale down on deploying in  the city and concentrate on enforcement outside the city because there is going to be a control room where instead of deploying police men to blow whistles they will be doing it KCC is constructing it  the Japan government has given is about to give funds by end of this year the construction work will start that is the program which is going to augment and support us, there is also another program of Bodabodas regulating Bodabodas we are part of the Bodaboda team KCC ministry of works these people who give Ids are called what [NIRA] NIRA and others going to register reds identify stages such that Bodaboda industry improves that is a serious program which is on coming there is another program to do with PSV Kamunyes am told they are supposed to get roots and also drivers to get budges like we have made it mandatory for all Bus drivers to have budges lf you look at the traffic report of the last year only Ten people died in Buses and the number used to be 300 _400 but we put emphasis on Buses now it is safer you can tell your people to use a bus than these Kamunyes and other cars so if we go back to Kamunyes we shall want to improve public service transport.
I:Okay then you mentioned one of the effects on what you’re doing on reducing crushes could you share with us more on the effect of all these programs and activities your doing on crushes?[what do you mean]the things you have been doing are there effects?
R: There effects definitely for instance between 2011 and 2014 we were reducing accidents 7%, 9% but 2015, 2016 the number shoot to 13% increase but last year there was a slight reduction amidst the challenges were going through the vehicles are improving the numbers are increasing the population is increasing roads are decreasing Bodabodas are increasing with antecedent  problems but at least we managed to keep the what and this is almost efforts of traffic police only other agencies don’t support us because if for instance Kampiringisa is a black spot they are getting head on why don’t you separate the road such that you avoid head on collision last report many people who died in accidents are Bodabodas and pedestrians, last year now why don’t we put facilities for  pedestrians to make it safe because they are the ones they kill everyday where do they cross from, there is no pedestrian safety in Ugandan roads “Akuna” except few which is xxxx is but we are talking of Entebbe road where are people supposed to cross there markets this side markets that side schools this side where are people supposed to cross in other countries if you have travelled at least me I have a privilege of have travelled almost throughout the world, roads are made for pedestrians that’s what I normally say they are not meant for vehicles but here roads are made for vehicles and that’s why motorists don’t give respect to people who are crossing so amidst all those you know in Uganda people are myopic they think all problems of accidents of crushes are traffic and we look at them laugh at them even the UN decade of early action for road safety it has not emphasized the enforcement the five pillars if you know them these safer roads safer vehicles safer what management so enforcement may come in somewhere under management and if it was a big issue and  they  have cleared  pointed it out but they are talking of safer roads they are talking of safer vehicles we want the vehicles to be inspected because about  30% of vehicles in Uganda are in poor mechanical condition but safer roads how do you have safer roads we have to take care of pedestrians because they are the ones who are the most vulnerable who don’t have vehicles who should be protected so that when a pedestrian is walking you can swing  your arm but here the Bodaboda will go with it because you can’t separate a road like Entebbe road especially these roads which are like this,[ demonstrates on paper] this is a road assuming it is going this side going that side now you find this is a shoulder the only thing that separate a shoulder from the road is a line paint so the vehicles normally come and ride here if you go to countries you raise such that it is difficult for the vehicle to do what to overlap and go on board and that is why the president was complaining why do they construct roads and they put a line which line is even washed away so a driver does not know whether he is encroaching on the pedestrian facility and there roads like these of Gulu, no shoulders period no shoulders even when a vehicle is over taking it just knocks pedestrians so that is what we are talking of are these safer roads when UNRA and others are doing road designs do they take pedestrian consideration I have never seen them come here to ask us about black spots for instance.
I: Okay thank you, you think you hinted on some of the challenges of enforcing we have covered any other challenges besides agencies that are not supporting, the design any other challenges of enforcing?
R: Yeah government besides government does not take care of road safety as a priority let me tell you about 30people died last week in crushes about or more according to this paper if these were from nodding disease you even heard parliament was up in arms because they wanted money and they were nodding disease if it was an epidemic wouldn’t government go in immediately 30people died in a week isn’t road safety an epidemic in sub Sahara in Africa so if government does not come in and all we need is not a digging deal children want safer places to cross from when they go to school the answers are there they are straight forward even if you I don’t know whether you have a child of p.3 they will give you solutions that we need zebra crossings which are respected we need safer places to cross from bridges, we need drivers who respect shoulders, but government does not put in money the recommendation was  that at least is it 1% of the GDP should  put in road safety because even we lose is it 3% of GDP is lost because of accidents if you put 1% you will not lose 3% so government does not think road safety has a priority and it is not only the government of Uganda Sub Sahara in Africa [ sub-Sahara Africa okay] even the public even you people you are a problem much as your killed every day you will take risks.
I:Okay so as we conclude let us just let us just look at pedestrians I know we have about less than 5minutes so as we conclude specific pedestrians mention a number of activities that might target both motorists or pedestrians but specific pedestrians what interventions has the police  implemented in the past.
R:As I have told you we don’t our role is not to educate but we are doing it, we are doing it all radio stations in Uganda all we have free airtime we educate, TVs you have seen me on TWEDOKO NTV and they’re going to continue with it we negotiated we give it another year you have seen the other stations, which have come here TV we have given them highway codes to serialize them such that people know dos and don’ts they could people don’t know how to cross the roads they cross “Gafura” they don’t know the simple basics that you have to look left right left and when it is safe is when you cross they come some stressed levels in Uganda too much like am stressed this morning I don’t know about you if you have quarreled with your girlfriend and now when you’re here we see you physically that is psychologically over something else, so we are educating the motorists I mean the pedestrians and we have loaded by the way these humps you see on the highways it is us some engineers don’t want humps they inconvenience motorists but the current driving culture we have in Uganda and type of roads we must have humps if we had humps on Entebbe road we wouldn’t be getting these crushes we are talking about because on average, on average every week we get two people killed between Entebbe,Kibuye and Bayita and those who are seriously injured are many if we have humps those of state house they say they don’t want those humps the speeds are too much the activities are too many so we are lobbying UNRA to put humps when you put humps in Lwengo we no longer have Lwengo was the leading in crushes throughout every year in Uganda because of the corners and speeding and speeding Buses so humps are checking on them you come and hit it you over turn you would rather die alone than killing many people especially where we have schools where we have hospitals and built up areas.
I: Okay then do you have any other interventions that you considered to implement but you didn’t pedestrians?
R:For pedestrians no yeah we are working closely with safe way right way of pedestrians safety like you know recently safe way right way got an award and I was and I was part of the team that got an award in UK for road safety initiative between Kampala and Busia and we addressed the crushes of school children around Iganga area  up to now we no longer have those crushes so those they are coming back , they are coming back now we are targeting we are going to Gulu road to do the same initiative.
I:Okay so briefly what has been the effect  of this education program on TV crushes has it had an inpact?
R:I believe it has  because I believe because like you know our target is the youth the children for you your beyond redemption but these children of primary they learn to respect they grow with it if you tell a child because we go to schools I have a school program I have an officer called the woman xxxx her program is school visit even in this quarter she is going to visit 15 schools she has started but we still have some especially on vulnerable roads when you  tell a teach a child to fasten a sit belt , they normally tell us daddy in school they told me you become embarrassed so for us those who have died long time ago but they are still we don’t mind because changing their perception is very difficult in Runyankole am a Munyankole what is your tribe[ a Musoga]and you[an Itesoti]there is a proverb which says “Akati kainukwa kali kabisi” a stick can be bent when it is still young if it is old like me he will break it so that’s what we are targeting actually I want physically myself to go to Gayaza junior and Gayaza high I have already  talked to the headmistress because that’s where my girls were I still have the whatever such that we don’t get those and Makerere college we have addressed Makerere college because there is a hostel of girls they cross but we addressed it in these new ones and they were put in new road designs KCCA they are not risky and there is a plan of putting a bridge [okay]because we have lobed, we have lobed I myself and some officer from work lobed were in Genever secretary general UN centre envoy they did a review of Uganda and as a result they are going to support even UNDP here has come in plus ADP because they were they told us recently the secretary general’s envoy was here two weeks ago he even made a presentation they told us that they have been supporting AIDs, HIV/ AIDs and environment now they think road safety should be supported so if you see through lobbing and this was Me and a man called xxxx and xxxx now at least we may get some [okay]so part of the money which we are likely to get 10 bridges in Kampala which and if they can put one at college school on Entebbe road that’s where we have many problems yeah.  
I: Okay then as we conclude tell us the about challenges aiming in implementing pedestrian targeted interventions?
R:The challenges of course they are no, your like a reverend who take people for baptism and ask what  have you brought these people yet you know we perform a baptism function we have talked over and over but they are not pedestrian facilities  there markets everywhere road side markets they affect these pedestrians they are the ones knocked most actually 74% death last year was pedestrians and bodaboda riders and their passengers 37% each they shared, so the challenges are we can’t enforce pedestrian safety ourselves the road largely it is education and what can enforce pedestrian safety is safety roads which are safe safer for pedestrian, pedestrian facilities and awareness [okay]so we find it because they are everywhere my 1000 traffic officers visa vise at 37 I mean about 30million are pedestrians you people who have vehicles your few you know.
I: Okay then lastly what other stake holders you mentioned you worked with xxxx, xxxx with the organizations?
R:Those I have worked with ministry of works those are not even I mentioned names but they are ministry of works we are closely working with UNRA although we still have issues with them when they are designing roads they don’t use us we are experts with road safety we are working with KCCA we are working with NGO safe way right way red cross and other issues which assist us in evacuation we are working now we have a very good working relationship with Makerere where do you come from [ Makerere School of  Public Health]yes all of xxxxx and her team  that’s why I gave you an interview I will not have given you we are working with media especially  with radio especially NTV, NTV and all radio stations throughout the country we have free airtime.
I: Okay thank you very much this is the end of the interview however how do we access some these documentations [which documentations] the traffic reports?
R: You go on our website [website okay] but the one of 2017 I can’t give you we have already given to the IGs about launching but if you [okay] but if definitely if you want the other reports my staff officer can give Bettina you work closely with her she is in the next office [okay] but 2017 you will get it soon very soon.
I: Okay please thank you very much for your time.
R: Welcome