The Executive Director of the Bureau of Public Safety, Nana Yaw Akwada, has suggested a strict enforcement of the law in the quest to curb road accidents in the country.
Commenting on what can be done to prevent these accidents, he averred that aside the law enforcement, the various authorities should ensure a proper regime of licensing to drivers.
“Two key factors we should be looking at is law enforcement and the licensing regime. In 2021, we couldn’t deploy technology for law enforcement”.
Nana Yaw Akwada
Nana Yaw Akwada lamented that till now, the authorities have not been able to enforce an approach like a spot fine system which saw discussions as far back as 2011. He described the failure to enforce this as an indentment on the institution that has the mandate to ensure sanity on our roads.
“So, the discussion is not beginning. The discussion has been ongoing but nothing is changing. We must overhaul the system”.
Nana Yaw Akwada
His comments follow some experts attributing the issue of road accidents to the indiscipline among drivers.
Mr. Akwada intimated that it is worse fate that, yearly who is to blame and solution proposals are put out there on the public domain but nothing has been done. Speaking from his perspective, he stated that in the last ten years, the kind of discussions on road accidents have not dealt much with the issue.
“We must understand that the fact that the sheer deaths on our roads have been increasing in the last ten years, injury is on the rise, the total crushes is on the rise, we cannot place it on a single causal factor and have results”.
Nana Yaw Akwada
According to Mr. Akwada, as it stands now, the nation is looking at a state of complete hopelessness that needs to be addressed. He posited that in the last ten years Ghana has recorded significant increases in all aspects of road traffic examination, sating that, “it is an indentment on all relevant state institutions and we must have a complete overhaul of the state of affair.
“I’m talking of the licensing regime, the law enforcement approach, the education risk; these are things that we all know already. If there is anything that we can do to readily turn around this issue, we must overhaul the system completely.”
Nana Yaw Akwada
Indiscipline amongst drivers
Earlier, Engineer David Osafo Adonten, Director for Planning and Programmes at the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), averred that the lack of indiscipline amongst vehicle drivers is the major cause of road accidents in the country.
According to Engineer Adonten, NRSA is attributing the accidents to the level of indiscipline because as far as it is concerned as an authority, it has done its best but drivers unfortunately aren’t complying.
Prior to the christmas festivities, he stated that the NRSA was able to scale its activities through road safety education, media publicity, engagements,outreach and so on.
“Getting down to the last quarter of the year, we all expected that in Christmas and new year, as a result of the rise in trends of travels across the country, there should be increases in crashes and deaths but we still managed in a way to do a lot through the media both traditional and social”.
Engineer David Osafo Adonten
Engineer Adonten disclosed that his outfit is analyzing the accidents. He noted that if it comes to the categories of accidents, the motorcycle category is becoming a bigger issue and is a problem the NRSA has already identified in the past.
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