Superintendent Emmanuel Adu Boahen, Ashanti Regional Commander of the Police Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD), has advised road safety stakeholder institutions to be committed to duty.
He urged them to shun lukewarm attitudes to work given the critical nature of road safety issues, especially their correlation with life and death.
The Police MTTD estimates that on the average one person dies and 14 people get injured daily through road crashes in Ashanti, one of the accident-prone Regions in the country.
For the first quarter of 2021, official records indicate that a total of 581 road crashes were recorded with fatalities surpassing the 127 deaths recorded around the same period in 2020.
Superintendent Adu Boahen, addressing a ‘Road Safety Communication Strategic Planning’ meeting in Kumasi, said there was no room for complacency regarding issues related to motor-traffic.
It was important that duty bearers upheld their terms of reference and the regulations binding stakeholders in the usage of the road to ensure sanity.
The meeting was organized by the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) in collaboration with the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) and Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS).
It targeted communication officers from road safety stakeholder institutions in the metropolis.
The aim was to review road crash data and speed management plans and also discuss road safety communication work in the various institutions.
The stakeholders’ engagement serves as a prelude to preparations towards the planning and execution of a road safety national mass media campaign scheduled for December, this year.
Superintendent Adu Boahen emphasized the need for traditional authorities and political leaders to not interfere in their work, saying such an attitude was an impediment to promoting the rule of law.
“Almost every time a driver is arrested for a road traffic offence, calls come in from all sorts of high officers, especially politicians and traditional rulers who intervene for the release of the culprit,” he disclosed.
“We need to bring this to an end, so we can see to the prosecution of offenders to serve as a deterrent to others,” the Police MTTD Commander observed.
Ms Simbiat Wiredu, the Regional Director of the NRSA, said her outfit would not relent in working with identifiable groups to mitigate the high incidence of road crashes in the Region.
“This trend cannot continue, and this is the reason why the Authority is partnering with the media to launch the second phase of the ‘Arrive Alive’ mass media campaign to tighten road safety education and enforcement throughout the country,” she noted.
Madam Yvonne Nabo, Deputy Director of Administration, KMA, admonished drivers to avoid speeding and obey all road safety regulations in order to preserve precious lives.
It was imperative for the road safety stakeholder institutions to work closely and share ideas to promote discipline on the road, she appealed.
Ms Mavis Obeng-Mensah, Communication Officer for the BIGRS Project in Ghana, hinted that the campaign primarily sought to address speeding and targeting male drivers between 19 and 29 years.
