DCI urged to probe vehicle number plates scam

Road safety officials want police to investigate a syndicate involving suspicious alteration of number plates for vehicles involved in accidents.

This comes after the exposure of a vehicle in which 16 people perished in a road crash near Kikopey in Nakuru County last year whose registration number and even the chassis number were later changed and allocated to another vehicle.

The Toyota Hiace matatu initially bore the registration KCD 955B but had its chassis number KDH201-001 allocated to  KDX 971A after the accident, while its status at the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) portal remains blank.

Following the grisly accident that wiped out 14 members of a family from Murang’a County, safety lobby groups raised concerns that the matatu did not meet road safety standards which included being fitted with roll bars that prevent the vehicle body from crumbling in on impact.

Road Safety Association of Kenya Chairman David Kiarie is now asking the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to probe the scandal, terming it a very dangerous precedent which compromises not only road safety but also national security.

“It is a very serious security risk to change the registration numbers of a vehicle that is involved in an accident. How many more have been altered similarly and what is the motive behind it,” Kiarie posed.

He added that police should dig out more information and take action on whoever is behind the alteration of vehicle registration numbers which is a mandate of the road safety Authority.

Efforts to get a comment from NTSA officials were fruitless as calls to their office lines were not answered.

Kiarie who was accompanied by Speed Governors and Road Safety Association Secretary General John Mutisya, expressed concerns that victims of road accidents involving such vehicles may never be compensated by insurers.

“Victims of such accidents are likely not to be compensated by insurance companies because the vehicle cannot be traced after alteration of its particulars. Many Kenyans will lose heavily through this racket,” Kiarie asserted.

He also charged that there is a possibility of cartels making money by harvesting of human body parts of people involved in fatal accidents.

The official added: “If people can alter the registration particulars of a vehicle that was involved in a fatal accident, how do we know that the same characters are not part of a cartel making money by harvesting and selling body parts of the victims, like kidneys?”

Mutisya, while also calling for a thorough probe into the illegal scheme, said insiders at NTSA who may be parrt of the racket should be exposed as thousands of road users are at serious threat.

The official added that criminal networks including terrorists may be using the vehicle registration alteration scam to cover up their activities.

“How many other vehicle details have vanished or how many unroadworthy vehicles are on the roads putting the lives of our citizens under serious threat?,” Mutisya queried.

He  urged President William Ruto to intervene personally and rout out the scandal which threatens to tarnish his name because the buck stops with his office.