The High court has ordered National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) to release all impounded matatu to their owners.
Today, High Court judge, Justice Bahati Mwamuye in issuing the order, urged the NTSA and Traffic police officers to ensure they act within the confines of law.
The matatu operators had moved to the High Court through advocates Danstan Omari and Shedrack Wambui over what they termed as blatantly illegal action from the police and the NTSA.
The petitioners argued that the police and NTSA impounded their vehicles since November 2024.
They claimed that NTSA violated the consumer rights under the constitution to choose which vehicle they require to travel in by impounding the vehicles as well as removing number plates from some vehicles making it impossible to operate.
Further, they alleged that that NTSA appears to be dictating the rights of citizens to have the best facility inform of transport by impounding the vehicles.
They also claimed that their was no participation from their leaders before NTSA arrived at the decision of impounding the matatus commonly known as ‘ganya’.
It is their submission that the number of citizens feeding from the matatu industry is collosal hence impounding them is fatal to the jobless citizens who cannot afford the white collar jobs.
They claim that just a single ‘ganya’ costs over Ksh 30m to buy, get license, put the infrastructure of music and the graffiti.
An image of a matatu with graffiti. Photo- NTSA
They also said that every month they remit over Ksh 500,000 to bank given the fact that the vehicle were secured on loan hence detaining the vehicles gives them immense losses.
The matatu operators have threatened to sue the director general of NTSA in person and individual police officers seeking compensation of approximately Ksh 5B as the loss they have incurred.
The case rotates in an operation that commence around January 21, 2025 where the Kenya Traffic police officers working together with the NTSA led to the crackdown of matatu’s commonly known as ‘ganyas’.
Some of the affected matatus are Ambush in Rongai and Money heist over allegations of misbehaving on the road.
