Alhassan Tampuli
The Deputy Minister of Transport, Alhassan Tampuli, has announced a mandatory training for commercial drivers in the country. This way, he said, they would upgrade their skills and keep abreast with modern features of vehicle technologies.
He said, “Commercial drivers will undergo mandatory annual training to upgrade their driving skills in order to stay abreast with the changing features in modern vehicle technologies.”
Government through the Ministry of Transport, he added, is working tirelessly to ensure that long distance travelling vehicles are fitted with speed limiters as well as the introduction of passenger manifest which will help to capture in full, details of all passengers who board such vehicles.
Speaking on behalf of the Minister of Roads and Transport, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah at the launch of the Ghana Driver and Road Safety Awards 2022 programme yesterday, he said injuries and deaths due to road traffic crashes were a major public health concern in developing countries.
This, he said, could be tackled with a multi-disciplinary approach through awareness creation, strict implementation of traffic rules and scientific engineering measures.
The Acting Director General of the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), Ing. David Osafo Adonteng, said the theme for the event: “The role of information technology in promoting safer road users” is appropriate at a time when diverse groups had made efforts to support them.
He said road safety was a shared responsibility as such the rewards would also be extended to include basic schools that have complied with teaching and practicing road safety in fulfillment of NSRA’s policy of mainstreaming road safety into the academic curriculum.
The Ghana Driver and Road Safety Awards, which was instituted 10 years ago, is aimed at complementing the efforts of the agencies mandated with driver training and certifications as well as road safety enforcement.
Freda Frimpong, Director of Partnerships, Ghana Driver Road Safety Awards, in her opening remarks said the Ghana Road Safety Awards was instituted as a result of the grim statistics that 1.3 million human lives were lost annually through traffic accidents worldwide.
She indicated that the safety awards is premised on the knowledge that with safe roads, the risk of road traffic crashes would be greatly reduced with the driver serving as the primary actor in ensuring safety.
As part of efforts to reach more drivers efficiently, a digital driver platform was also launched to offer free continual road safety education for drivers on their mobile phones.
Amongst some of the categories that drivers will compete in include intercity category, intra city category, taxi driver category, ride- hailing, corporate drivers category among others.
The awards will be held in December 2022 in partnership with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), Ministry of Roads and Transport and other major stakeholders.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah