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NTC, NRSA forge partnership on road safety campaign

The National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) has called on the management of New Times Corporation (NTC) to support its fight againstroad crashes and its associated injuries and deaths.

The Director General of the NRSA, Mrs May Obiri Yeboah, said these yesterday in Accra when she paid a courtesy call on the management of the NTC.

She explained that the NRSA’s role has changed from advisory to regulatory role.

According to Mrs Yeboah, the carnage on the roads was deadly and that there was the need for “every Ghanaian to come on board and support the authority to reduce road crashes.”

She said the authority was expected to regulate all institutions,especially their use of vehicles to ensure the safety of drivers and the vehicles and also how they behave on the roads.

 “We are supposed to ensure that the transport system in our country is regulated just as we have in the marine and aviation sectors,  the Act 993which was passed in 2019 the National Road Safety Act has given us the mandate to regulate the transport  sector especially the commercial transport area,” she  said.

 She said the carnage on roads could be attributed to the human behaviours including indiscipline hence the need to control the sector.

Mrs Yeboah  said there was the regulatory inspectorate compliance directorate to ensure that institutions in the country complied with the rules and regulations and also provide standards to be followed by various institutions in the country.

Mrs Yeboah said there were only 200 inspectors across the country which she described as woefully inadequate, as compared to the volume of work expected to be done.

She was of the view that more inspectors would be employed to augment the workload at the NSRA’s offices in the regions and district to enable them address the challenges confronting the authority. 

She said most institutions or organisations brought out campaigns of messages which were not in tandem with that of the authority, unlike NTC who wrote to the authority on the campaign it wanted to run and “we have now incorporated NTC into our “Stay Alive” campaign which will be running soon.”

 The Managing Director of NTC, Mr Martin Adu-Owusu, urged the NRSA to enforce the rules and regulations as the indiscipline on the roads was alarming.

 “I am happy you have been given the mandate to enforce the laws, previously it was all education and now there will be some form of deterrent with the enforcement,” he stated.

He said the campaign  on ensuring road safety had ran over the years and now the  campaigns should be geared towards triggering emotions to bring about  behavioural  change.

 The editor of Ghanaian Times, Mr David Agbenu, called for laws that were biting enough to deter road users from driving carelessly and contributing to the high number of accidents on the road.

BY JEMIMA ESINAM KUATSINU

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