By Angela Ayimbire
Tema, Oct. 14, GNA-Mr. Isaac Ashai Odamtten, Member of Parliament (MP) for Tema East Constituency has joined the Ghana News Agency (GNA) Tema Regional Office’s road safety campaign, with a call for road safety measures to be localized.
He said road safety should not only be situated within the national context but should also consider the specifics in districts, and constituencies for effective impact.
Mr. Odamtten made the call at the GNA-Tema and Motor Transport and Traffic Department (MTTD)-Tema Regional Office Road Safety Campaign which seeks to actively create consistent and systematic awareness advocacy on the need to be cautious on the road as a user.
The campaign also seeks to educate all road users about their respective responsibilities, and sensitize drivers, especially on the tenets of road safety regulations, rules, and laws.
Mr. Odamtten called on the National Road Safety Commission and its stakeholders to change the dynamics of road safety campaigns, stressing that situating road safety issues only within the national context would lead to leaving some critical issues that were specific for peculiar constituencies and districts out.
The Tema East MP emphasized that “the national statistics will speak to certain things, the national situation may be general, but what is happening in Tema for example, and even within the Tema catchment areas, within Tema East may deferred.
“You may find a sharp dichotomy between factors contributing to road crashes in Tema East and Tema Central, and unless we reach out to the local actors, our road safety campaign may fail that is why I support the GNA-Tema campaign which seeks to focus on specific actors for each group.”
Mr. Odamtten, also a former Tema Metropolitan Chief Executive Officer, added that the national economy had changed and therefore would require a change in approach to Ghana’s road safety issues.
Mr. Francis Ameyibor, GNA Tema Regional Manager explained that the agency has created a continuous educational platform for road safety and offers strategic stakeholders the medium to speak to their constituents on how best to contribute to making the country’s “road safer and crash free.”
He stressed that the essence of the “GNA-Tema and MTTD Road safety campaign,” was to use the power of the media to support and educate the public on the negative impact of road accidents.
Mr. Ameyibor as part of the initiative, strategic individuals and institutions would be offered the opportunity to send road safety messages to their constituents to raise awareness.
He appealed to Members of Parliament to serve as frontline road safety ambassadors and speak out anytime they engage their constituents, “we need to be systematic and consistent with our messages to the people, at every opportunity just spend two minutes to speak about road safety”.
GNA