The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), with the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service, have embarked on a speed Enforcement and Outreach Exercise on the Kasoa-Winneba-Mankessim-Cape Coast road, one of the notable hot spots for road traffic crashes and fatalities.
The exercise is in connection with the campaign unveiled by the NRSC on speed on Monday, May 8, 2017, dubbed “Save Lives: #Slow Down,” to observe the Commemoration of the West Africa Road Safety (WARSO) Day and UN Global Road Safety Week.
The WARSO Day is a day set aside on May 8 every year to be observed by member countries to celebrate the Anniversary and Inauguration of the association.
Made up of 15 countries and 4 non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), the West Africa Road Safety Organization was inaugurated on 8th May, 2008, under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), by the then President of the ECOWAS Commission, His Excellency Dr. Muhammed Ibn Chambers.
Celebrating its 9th Anniversary, WARSO has existed to foster partnership and collaboration at the sub-regional level to advance road safety agenda and enhance knowledge sharing and harmonization of some National plans of action within the sub region.
Also, WARSO is to promote and reinforce road safety activities and practices in West Africa through effective management of road safety and traffic matters with the view of drastically reducing road traffic crashes.
Ghana as part of the United Nations (UN) and an implementing country of the UN Decade of Action, a document of which it is a signatory that seeks to reduce road traffic crashes to 50% by the year 2020 which began in 2011 also joined member countries to observe the UN Global Road Safety Week.
In its 4th Anniversary, the week, therefore, comes off from the 8th to 14th May, by way member countries are being encouraged to remain committed and focused on the target set in the Decade of Action document.
WARSO has adopted the UN Decade of Action as an implementing working document in all it member states. It was of this reason that in this year, both WARSO and UN chose the same theme on speeding.
The National Road Safety Commission as the lead Road Safety Agency in Ghana, therefore led the celebrations in the country by unveiling a campaign on the slogan: “Save Lives: #Slow Down”.
The NRSC and the MTTD thus embarked on the exercise to increase the understanding of the dangers of speed and generate action measures to address speed in order to save lives on our roads.
The four sets of teams deployed to cover the designated areas were equipped with speed radar guns to check the speed of motorists and passengers to ensure enforce-ability of the law. NRSC advocates were on the other hand educating drivers, passengers and pedestrians on good road practices.
The Director in charge of Planning and Programming at the NRSC, Ing. David Osafo Adonteng, in an interview said Ghana bought into the idea after which the UN asked all member countries to consider the issue of speeding to create the awareness.
He added that, 60% of fatal crashes in the country are as a result of speeding, and that through the exercise, the team has observed the level of speeding on the highways, adding that majority of drivers are really speeding.
Ing. Adonteng was happy with the level of the exercise since the teams’ presence made the difference.
He said “Of course they recognize that we are here and we have mounted these speed checks at four strategic locations on the stretch. The signal is already running round among the transport operators so they are minimizing” he added.
DSP Adu Boahen, Staff Officer of the MTTD who led the Police, said the Kasoa-Winneba stretch was identified because most accidents that have happened in the country was on that stretch and speeding was a contributing factor.
The same exercise took place in other regions that traffic road crashes are prevalent.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
