National Youth Authority heightens road safety campaigns in Central Region

The National Youth Authority (NYA), in collaboration with the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), has organised a road safety campaign for drivers in the Awutu Senya District of the Central Region to reduce accidents.

It formed part of efforts by the Authority and allied stakeholders to effectively reduce road fatalities in the Region before, during and after the Easter festivities.

The NYA hopes to extend the campaign to Assin, Mfantseman, Ekumfi, Twifo-Lower-Denkyira and the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) municipalities.

The exercise, which started at about 0800 hours at Awutu Bereku Junction, saw participants marching through the principal streets as they distributed flyers on road safety to the public.

Wearing road safety vests, they held placards some of which read: "Stop road accidents," Stop for Pedestrians to cross,” “Respect Speed limits” and “Speed kills, kill your speed".

Many drivers, therefore, temporarily abandoned their vehicles as they keenly listened to tips on road traffic regulations to ensure sanity.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency after the exercise, Mr Richard Fredua Agyeman, the Regional Secretary of NRSC, advised drivers to be cautious, patient with school children, respect speed limits and use their seat belts regularly.

He expressed optimism that the Commission and its stakeholders would not relent in their efforts to educate, supervise and enforce the various legislations to help reduce the huge obstacles including poor road networks and human errors.

He mentioned over-speeding, drink driving, fatigue, mechanical faults, inexperienced driving, disabled vehicles, poor visibility at night, tyre bursts, wrongful overtaking and overloading of vehicles as some of the contributory factors to road accidents.

Touching on pedestrian knock downs, Mr Agyeman said child-pedestrians were among the highest-risk groups in the country for road traffic injury, adding that majority of school children in urban areas walked to school and were usually unaccompanied by an adult.

In that respect, he urged all to help children to cross the road to avoid knock downs, since road safety was a collective responsibility.

Mr Emmanuel Sodja Martey, the Regional Director of NYA, pledged the Authority’s collaboration with other stakeholders to embark on road line markings, fixing of streetlights and reflectors to make roads more visible to drivers, pedestrians and other users.

He proposed that a law must be passed to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages at the various lorry stations, which contributed to the increase in road accidents.