Road safety campaign launch ahead of the festive season
The annual festive season road safety campaign which will run until mid-January 2023 was launched to negate or mitigate the impact of any negative externality that is likely to occur on the country’s national road network during the festive season.
“We have arrived yet at another busy period of the year when we engage in operations on our national roads, promoting road safety, enforcing traffic laws, and saving lives through emergency response efforts,” the Chairman of the National Road Safety Council, Eliphas Owos-Oab said at the launch of the campaign in Windhoek.
According to Owos-Oab, stakeholders are ready to take on this huge challenge once again with fresh vigor and commitment.
Speaking at the launch event, the Deputy Minister of Works and Transport, Veikko Nekundi said a high number of crashes and resultant casualties are anticipated during the festive season holidays and events, mainly because most roads experience high volumes of vehicular traffic.
“As a government, we call on all citizens, law enforcement agencies, and road safety practitioners to promote the good cause for safer roads in Namibia during this festive season and beyond,” he said while urging stakeholders within the sub-sector to form a united front to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities on the roads and achieve the target of a 50% reduction by 2030.
According to the country’s Motor Vehicle Fund (MVA), during the campaign, the Fund will ensure increased emergency response capacity on the country’s main highways; activate the new emergency medical response base that has been necessitated by the lack of paramedics services; first responder awareness will be conducted and the Fund has started to roll out its Green Dot Programme which deals with public transport passenger safety in the six high crash regions, among other measures.
Meanwhile, year-to-date data compiled by the MVA Fund Emergency Call Center indicates that 4529 persons were injured and 398 fatalities, with the most common types of crashes being pedestrian-related, roll-overs, and collisions, resulting in passengers, and pedestrians.
Namibia which is ranked 14 in the world in terms of road traffic accidents in 2020 recorded 3000 road crashes compared to 2673 in 2021.
