Ghana qualifies for World Road Traffic Extrication Competition

Accra, May 2, GNA - Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) has qualified to participate in the forth coming World Cup of World Road Traffic Extrication Challenge 2010, scheduled for Ireland in September this year.

A two-day National Extrication Challenge (NEC 2010) dubbed: "Road Traffic Accident Rescue Operations Challenge 2010" on the theme: "Employing Right Techniques for saving lives and incident management" was organised by the GNFS, in Accra. The National Road Traffic Accident Operation Challenge had command rescue teams from the ten regions with an additional team from team. A Statement issued by Mr. Sam Oblejumah, Head of Public Relation of GNFS, said the central regional Fire Command emerged the overall best team in this year's National Road Traffic Accident Operation Challenge 2010.

It said by the victory the central region road traffic accident rescue operations team has qualified to represent Ghana at the competition. The statement said Ghana had measured up to international assessment in road traffic collision extrication, adding that through the GNFS Ghana has participated twice in the world cup in road traffic extrication challenge. It said that statistics shows that last year, in the 375 cases of road traffic collision operation that GNFS engaged in, 853 injuries and 127 deaths were recorded.

The statement said without the intervention of the GNFS, the country would have lost more lives in vehicular collision on our roads. It said the National Road Safety Commission indicates that 1,600 people die yearly in Ghana through road traffic collision, revealing that four people die daily. Mr. Martin Amidu, Minister of Interior, in a speech read on his behalf, charged fire fighters to effectively apply professionalism in the work to save lives on the road. He said government would support the GNFS with vehicles to enable it to cover all the collision prone areas within the country. Mr. Amidu appealed to corporate bodies and philanthropists to help the Fire service to work effectively to save lives adding that "This must be a shared responsibility, since all of us are at risk".