By James Amoh Junior
Accra, Sept. 23, GNA -The Automation Ghana Group (TAGG), an industrial and building automation group of companies and the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) have embarked on a road safety awareness campaign in Batsona, Tema West, to sensitize drivers and other road users on road traffic safety.
The campaign was part of the company’s corporate social responsibility to the community, to ensure safety on the country’s roads and to contribute to shifting behavioural change among road users in the Batsona enclave.
The maiden road safety campaign, expected to be carried out from September 2022, is in partnership with the NRSA on the theme: “STAY ALIVE, TAGG CARES”.
Staff of the company, clad in road safety T-shirts, wielded placards some of which read: “Do not jump the red lights”, “slow down your family will be waiting for you”, “to avoid deaths, use seat belts”, “every pedestrian is important” among others.
The NRSA and the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) took turns to interact with and share knowledge on road safety generally, driver techniques, appropriate use of road signs by motorists, enforcement of road safety regulations among others.
A Road Traffic Crash and Casualty Situation Report from the MTTD shows that a total of 1,300 persons lost their lives through road crashes between January and June 2022.
The report said 7,997 persons sustained various degrees of injuries, with a total of 1,356 pedestrian knock downs within the same period while a total of 7,687 crashes were reported from January to June 2022, involving 13,248 vehicles.
Comparing the period of January to June 2022, to the same period last year, there was a 6.12 per cent decrease in the number of cases reported and a 5.19 per cent decrease in vehicles involved in the crashes.
The Greater Accra Region alone recorded 3,267 crashes, representing 42.50 per cent of the total number of crashes.
Thus, Mr Kweku Asmah, Group Chief Executive, TAGG, speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) said, the company embarked on the road safety campaign primarily because of the increasing carnages on the country’s roads and the disturbing statistics from the NRSA and the MTTD.
Road users, he said, were contributing to incidents and accidents on the roads, adding that it was essential that motorists around the Spintex Baatsona enclave were sensitized on the need to keep safe.
“Sharing knowledge in road safety awareness in the community will go a long way to help reduce road safety crashes,” he stressed.
The Group Chief Executive said, as a socially responsible company, one of the company’s strategies was to maintain and keep interest in safety, health and environment to ensure that operational threats were eliminated or reduced to the barest minimum.
One of such threats, he mentioned, was the indiscipline on the roads which had led to fatalities and injuries, thus the road safety campaign was a way of reaching out to the community and ensuring that lives were safeguarded.
Mr Asmah said road safety enforcement was key in nipping road crashes in the bud and reversing the rather worrying fatality rates and trends.
He said the road safety initiative did not only complement the efforts of mandated road safety stakeholders and regulators, but would help improve user behaviour through the campaign to increase awareness on road safety risk.
Mr Felix Owusu, a Planning Manager, NRSA, said road safety had become a global and national health concern requiring more sensitization efforts to reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities.
He reiterated that road safety was a shared and collective responsibility and that the NRSA, as part of its National Stay Alive Campaign to ensure safety and protection of lives, had strengthened its sensitisation drive at lorry stations.
Kwadzo Dzodzegbe, Station Master, Kotobabi Spintex Station, expressed appreciation to The Automation Ghana Group for taking road safety issues a notch higher as that would promote discipline on Accra’s roads, particularly on the Spintex road.
GNA