Uganda: Women banned from sitting in front of trucks because they ’cause accidents’

The women they will no longer be able to sit in their front seats trucks, announced Wednesday a trade union in a city in the north Uganda, which claims that short skirts and exposed legs distract drivers and cause accidents.

“Some women wear short dresses that expose their legs and distract drivers, who end up causing accidents and passengers dying,” he told AFP. Patrick Opio Obote, the president of its street vendors association Pound, a large city in the north of the country.

The members of this trade union are salespeople who move from market to market and use trucks to transport their products.

The ban enters into force “right away“Even the drivers’ spouses will not have the right to travel in the co-driver’s seat,” he added.

Obote explained that the decision was made after examining the causes of road accidents in the area and the women, some of whom “go to bars to drink alcohol”, are a cause, along with speed and non-compliance. traffic code.

The decision is made a few days after one accident, on January 10, in Lira, in which 9 traders were killed and 20 were injured.

“Attack on women”

THE Alice Mugvania Cambize, a women’s rights activist, called the measure illegal, calling the “attack on women” evidence of “male chauvinism”.

“It’s absolutely against the Ugandan Constitution, which forbids blocking one sex “to participate freely in daily work”, she stressed, speaking to AFP.

“Blaming a car accident on the clothes is a clumsy reasoning and an indication of how they are still done discrimination “to the detriment of a woman in our societies, where men prefer her to live in the kitchen,” he said.