DECENTRALISE ROAD SAFETY COMMISSION TO SAVE LIVES

Chief Executive Officer for Safe Journey Foundation, Mr Patrick Kwame Frimpong is calling on the government to consider decentralising the activities of Ghana Road Safety Commission to the district level. He argued that this will decrease the workload on the limited number of staff of the commission and will prevent a further growth of traffic accidents.

Local flouting of road safety codes

According to Mr Patrick Kwame, the flouting of road safety codes is witnessing an astronomic rise since drivers operating on isolated roads at the district level assume they are beyond the reach of officials of the commission. According to the National Road Safety Commission, from January to February 2019 more than two thousand crashes took place in Ghana, involving over three thousand vehicles and four hundred fatalities. The commission, which at the moment is decentralised to the regional level, is hampered from carrying out a full-scale inspection vis-a-vis drivers adherence to road safety regulations, especially at remote areas.

Road malpractices

Most commercial drivers have capitalised on the foregoing shortfall and indulge themselves in myriads of road malpractices such as overloading, over speeding and driving without license. Drivers commute passengers in rickety vehicles in remote communities because they of the view that they can’t be apprehended by officials of the Commission since they(road safety staff) are totally absent in the operations in such areas.

Formation of District Road Safety Commission

According to a five-page road safety proposal copied to the office of the Press Radio, Mr. Patrick Frimpong is calling for the formation of District Road Safety Commission (DRSC). The formation of DRSC should constitute Chief Executive Officers of MMDAs, District MTTD Commander, District Health Director, representatives from; the District Fire Service, Urban or Feeder Roads, DVLA, National Health Insurance Scheme, Transport Union, District Education Directorate, Insurance companies, District Director for Road safety Commission and a person who will be appointed by President as the chairman or chairperson.

Task force for road safety

Aside the above-listed capacities making up DRSC, he is again calling for the formation of a task force. The task force per their line of duty will conduct daily checks on vehicles, report on damaged road signs, apprehend recalcitrant drivers among others.

National Road Safety Day

He again advised government to set a day aside for National Road Safety awareness creation. This he underlined will help reduce to the lowest level the rate of accident occurrence in the country.

Story by Enoch Akonnor, a journalist writing for the Daily Heritage. The reason for publishing this story is to help stop road accidents on the local level. Since this is a website for local news and community development in the rural areas of Ghana, it fits the scope of communitywatchdoggh.com. Road safety is an important issue in remote communities. Image by Akent879 from Pixabay