The Home Affairs Ministry, in collaboration with the Guyana National Road Safety Council, will on Friday host a national conference on road safety under the theme “Road Safety with Your Life on the Line”.
The conference, according to the Home Affairs Ministry, is scheduled to take place at the Guyana International Conference Centre, Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown from 09:00h to 16:00h.
The conference aims to examine and adopt road safety methodologies, create public awareness, and develop a plan of action resulting from the National Strategy on Road Safety. The conference hopes to achieve these objectives by creating a platform for dialogue among national stakeholders.
The one-day conference will consist of four workshop sessions, which will address such issues as the National Road Safety Strategy, public awareness, engineering and education. These workshops will provide stakeholders with the opportunity to offer solutions aimed at making our roadways safer.
Earlier this year, road safety stakeholders had agreed to implement an aggressive campaign to curtail the alarming rise in road accidents, with special emphasis on monitoring nightclubs and making better use of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) footage.
According to a Home Affairs Ministry release, in response to public outcry against road accidents, fatalities and traffic congestion, as well as its own concerns, a meeting was convened involving the Guyana National Road Safety Council, the Guyana Police Force, the Guyana Minibus Association, and the Ministry to discuss these matters and to come up with recommendations on the way forward.
Road accidents
The meeting was informed that the main causes for fatal accidents for 2013 was speeding, inattentiveness, and driving under the influence of alcohol. The main victims were pedestrians hit by private vehicles, driven by young people aged 16 to 24 and 25 to 33, between midday and evening hours and between evening hours and midnight on Sundays and Fridays.
In this connection, the Ministry said it was agreed that with this information in hand, there should be more targeted enforcement by the police force and education programmes by the Guyana National Road Safety Council.
Special programmes are to be organised for young drivers in particular. The police force is to set realistic targets with a view to bringing down fatal accidents and road accidents in general.
The meeting was informed that between 2010 and 2013, the Home Affairs Ministry procured and delivered to the force 18 breathalyser machines with printers and 400 mouthpieces, as well as 29 radar guns. Additionally, the meeting analysed several recommendations recently advanced by A Partnership for National Unity and found them agreeable and implementable in principle. “These recommendations were assigned to various stakeholders for further consideration as regard implementation, having regard to their respective capacities and competencies to do so,” the ministry said. It was further agreed that a National Conference on Road Safety will be convened early in the year bringing together all stakeholders in the campaign to uphold road safety throughout Guyana.
