Ensure safety on roads this festive season – drivers, road users urged

Ghanaian vehicle drivers, riders, and road users have been urged to as a matter of importance ensure discipline and compliance to promote safety on the road before, during, and after this year’s festive season.

Stakeholders from the road safety enforcement institutions, namely the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), the Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), and the National Insurance Commission (NIC) made the call during a road safety compliance exercise on the streets of Bolgatanga.

The collaborative initiative was to sensitize road users to the need to ensure safety on the road and to learn how to contribute to ensuring compliance with road and traffic rules and regulations to reduce crashes on the road.

The exercise was, in particular, to check licenses, roadworthiness, and insurance of vehicles, drivers, and riders to ensure they were up to date and complied with all the safety protocols to prevent accidents before, during, and after the Christmas and New Year celebrations.

Zechariah Laari, Upper East Regional Director of the NRSA, said road crashes remained a major challenge in the region and called for collective responsibility to ensure responsible driving and riding on the road.

According to him, statistics had revealed a total of 55 persons had lost their lives through road crashes in the region from January to November 2024, stressing that the issue was worrying and must be looked at urgently.

He said motorbikes were the most common type of vehicle involved in the crashes and added many young people were dying through the phenomenon, making the region lose its energetic human resource base.

“We are losing more of the working class, this is, from 18 to 40 years through the accidents and a source of worry because if you have a lot of the working class dying, they cannot contribute to Gross Domestic Product and the country also spends so much taking care of them.

“Apart from that, it is a burden on the families because a lot of them are breadwinners of their families, creating a lot of young widows and orphans”, he added.

Chief Superintendent of Police Williams Kpormegbe, Regional Commander, MTTD, said the exercise was crucial to ensuring compliance on the road during the yuletide, adding that the exercise would be sustained until January 8, 2025.

He urged road users to obey road rules and regulations and avoid speeding and drunk driving to reduce crashes on the road and save lives.

Emmanuel Abaidoo, the Upper East Regional Manager of the DVLA, noted that about 10,000 vehicles (including cars, tricycles, and motorbikes, among others) had been licensed since the beginning of the year.

He said it was against the law to ply unlicensed vehicles on the road and urged vehicle owners to get their vehicles licensed, adding the process was friendly and easy.

Ernest Osei Adofo, Upper East Regional Manager of the NIC, highlighted the benefits of ensuring their vehicles, adding that the insurance offered financial support in times of accidents to the beneficiary.

He encouraged the vehicle users to visit the NIC office and ensure their vehicles benefit from the package in case of future misfortune.