Maputo, Mozambique — Mozambican Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi said in Maputo that the government has begun to crack down on corrupt traffic police.
"There is a list of traffic police who have been severely punished, and several have been expelled", he said, during his weekly press briefing Thursday.
The Mozambique news agency cited a recent case in which a motorist driving from Maputo to Inhambane (a distance of about 500 kilometres) was stopped no less than eight times by the traffic police.
Responding to whether such was a normal procedure, Mocumbi said: "It's not normal for a car to be stopped for no good reason anywhere".
"The police should only stop a car when there is a reason for doing so".
There have also been cases in which the traffic police have distorted a recent ban on long distance commercial road passenger traffic at night.
This ban is aimed at long distance bus companies - but some unscrupulous traffic police have used the ban to halt any vehicle carrying passengers in an attempt to extort money from the driver.
Thus, last month a mini-bus used by a delegation from the African Commission on Human and People's Rights, headed by Malawian lawyer and former political prisoner Vera Chirwa, was stopped three times by traffic cops when returning at night from Mabalane, in Gaza province, to Maputo.
"Such incidents should be denounced at once so that those responsible can be identified and punished," said Mocumbi.
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The Prime Minister revealed that he too had experience of the predatory behaviour of the traffic police.
He said that he had once been stopped when driving his personal rather than his protocol vehicle, and when he was wearing casual clothes.
When the policeman realised who he had stopped, he tried to wave him on. But Mocumbi demanded to know why he had been stopped.
Forced to invent an offence on the spot, the policeman said he thought the car had broken the speed limit. Mocumbi pointed out that no speed limit at all was indicated on that stretch of road.
Mocumbi said he had later notified the police command of the number of the traffic policeman concerned and was confident that action had been taken against him.
Such behaviour by the traffic police "are acts of corruption and severe measures have to be taken", he declared.
Mocumbi admitted that reforming the police force was taking a long time.
