— Madam Pearl Adusu Gyasi, Public Relations Officer, National Road Safety Authority (NRSC), says the Authority’s road safety campaign “Stay Alive” will be enhanced to advocate for compliance with road safety regulations.
She said the three-year campaign, which started in 2021, required more accountability from road users, drivers, and pedestrians alike, to take full responsibility for the carnages on roads instead of attributing the occurrences to the supernatural.
The campaign, she noted, among other objectives, was to induce positive behavioural change among road users to observe and advocate compliance with road traffic regulations and report infractions while eliciting commitment to safety for strict enforcement of regulations and laws.
Madam Gyasi, speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the Campaign, which would be intermittently evaluated, would combine education, advocacy, training, and enforcement to enable all stakeholders to join efforts to fight the menace of road crashes and fatalities.
A report by the Motor Transport and Traffic Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service has revealed that some 2,924 lives were lost nationwide through road crashes in 2021 – a 12.94 per cent jump compared to the 2020 figure of 2,589 persons killed.
A key achievement of the Stay Alive Campaign is the establishment of an information centre at the head office of the NRSA for the public to reach out to the Authority through a tollfree number 194 should they witness any infraction on the road.
She said the Campaign, which would be intermittently evaluation, combined education, advocacy, training, and enforcement to enable all stakeholders to join efforts to fight the menace of road crashes and fatalities.
The PRO said the media and other collaborators had played tremendous roles in the road safety campaign and expressed hope that by the end of the three-year campaign, the country would have witnessed some significant improvement in terms of safety on the roads.
Speaking on the number of deaths during the Christmas season, she said the campaign had helped significantly to reduce carnages, which ordinarily would have soared around that time of the year, adding that traditionally, the Christmas and New Year period witnessed increased vehicular and human mobility thereby increasing crash levels.
“But for the interventions of the NRSA, DVLA and the MTTD, through the constant education, sensitization, enhanced enforcement and arrest of recalcitrant drivers and motorist to serve as deterrent, there could have been more crashes on the country’s roads,” she said.
She indicated the NRSA was unrelenting on its efforts and was working assiduously to nip the phenomenon of road crashes in the bud to secure lives, saying “road safety is a share and collective responsibility which requires all stakeholders to get involved in the campaign.”
Madam Gyasi said, “the other aspect of the Authority, the compliance status or the enforcement and regulatory status will go into full gear in 2022 as compliance notices will be issued to stakeholder institutions who fail to do their work to promote road safety in the country.”
She said as part of efforts to reduce crashes and fatalities, the NRSA would go into full regulation of the transport sector to get the transport unions and operators to play their roles in ensuring safety and sanitizing the country’s roads.
She urged the public to be cautious on the road and develop a positive road safety culture in their collective effort to help reduce road fatalities and associated injuries.
Source: Ghana News Agency
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