The Deputy Minister of Transport, Hassan Tampuli, has revealed that his outfit had no hand in amending the Legislative Instrument (L.I) that would have allowed Members of Parliament, Ministers, and judges to use sirens and drive without speed limits.
According to the Deputy Minister, it was the Chairperson of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee, Dominic Akuritinga Ayine – who is a Member of the Minority group – who pushed for the inclusion of the aforementioned personalities.
“The [Transport] Minister disagreed that if that happens it was going to create some amount of chaos in the society. You can imagine all 275 MPs driving around with sirens blurring all over the place, there’s going to be some amount of disorder and the Minister disagreed at that meeting and the records will show.
“On the day that I went to Parliament to lay the Instrument, when I rose to lay it I was stopped by the Chairman of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee. And the Speaker directed that we should let the Chairman of the committee verify if the proposed amendment had been included before we were allowed to lay it,” he recounted.
Although the L.I. was withdrawn Tuesday afternoon after public agitations, Mr Tampuli insists that the blame should be laid at the doorstep of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee which is chaired by the Minority.
While admitting that the Ministry was seeking to amend portions of the Road Traffic Regulations 2012, the Gushegu MP said the original amendment which was pre-laid before the Committee in February 2024 was to review the existing L.I. to fit contemporary times, particularly, electric cars.
“…when you go and have the pre-laying meeting with the Subsidiary Legislation Committee, you go through the amendment one after the other. So in the course of this clause review, we got to the clause, and members of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee, chaired by Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, insisted that we must expand the scope of this particular clause,” he stressed.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, the Gushegu MP stated that the Transport Ministry was happy to withdraw the L.I. because it was not in support of it in the first place.
“The Ministry of Transport and the government had no appetite at all for including Ministers, MPs to use sirens and drive without speed limit. If we wanted that, we would have done that in 2017. It is not some six months to elections that anybody wants to give some privileges to MPs and Ministers of state.
“So these provisions were not from the government, it came from Parliament and nobody among the Subsidiary Legislation Committee can say, it isn’t from there and we are happy to be withdrawing this L.I.,” he stated.
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