Another story is told of a traffic police who stopped a motorist and, after a few minutes of inspection, the motorist had all what was required of him.
But since the traffic police wanted to squeeze a bribe out of him, he (the motorist) was found with one traffic offence: His car was supposed to carry four passengers but he was carrying only two! The motorist parted with a few banknotes before he was allowed to proceed.
This is how our police stations and traffic police, who are supposed to be the custodians of our safety, behave in most cases.
And Transparency International, the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption, had in most cases ranked our police force the most corrupt in the East African Community (EAC) region.
The East Africa Bribery Index (EABI) 2013 indicated that Tanzania’s law-enforcement agencies scored 72.9 per cent in bribery aggregation, followed by Kenya (70.7 per cent), Burundi (64 per cent), Uganda (60 per cent) and Rwanda (54 per cent).
But all this could be destined to history, thanks to the launch of an exciting Tanzania Police Force transformation programme aimed at creating a people-centred and user-friendly effective police force.
According to the chief of the Police Delivery Unit (PDU), Deputy Commissioner of Police Goodluck Joseph Mongi, the June 2016-June 2019 programme supported by various stakeholders, including the private sector, will make the force “user-friendly and the most efficient south of the Sahara”.
We have seen several such ambitious programmes turning into white elephants, but this time around Tanzanians, including the media, should rally behind the police so that at the end of the day we have a well-functioning police force; a police force that everyone should be proud of.
Previously the police force implemented a 10-year (2006-2014) programme aimed at reforming the force but it was not successful enough. There might be various reasons behind the failure of this programme, including lack of awareness to the public.
Support from the media by educating the public on the good intentions behind the transformation programme should be a hundred per cent. But on the other side of the coin the police should seem to be cooperating with the media in this noble goal.
The police force should always leave their doors open in the course of implementing the programme which will officially be launched in Dar es Salaam on June 25.
The transformation programme will first be implemented in Kinondoni police region as a pilot project for six months before being rolled out to other regions across the country.
The programme will involve standardization of police stations, including introduction of mobile police stations, and strategic deployment of modern and digitalized equipment.
It will also involve effective policing, enhancing police integrity, improving internal and external communication between the police and the community, and resource mobilization through alternative sources of funding.
Tanzanians are duty bound to support this programme in order to give our tainted police force a new paint.
We should also pay tribute to the CRDB Bank Plc that has already shown the way by supporting the programme.
In March, this year, CRDB Bank Plc contributed 225m/- towards the transformation programme of our police force.
The money, as part of the bank's celebrations to mark 20 years of growth, will build a state-of-the-art police call centre with the capacity of receiving 120 calls at a time.
The centre will have the ability to identify the call location and locating the nearest patrol car using GPS track system and direct it to the crime scene.The time to act and support this righteous programme is now.
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