The West Africa Road Safety Organization (WARSO) has conferred Honorary Membership on three Ghanaian road safety advocates.
They were honoured for their immense contribution in road safety advocacy in the West Africa Sub-Region.
They are Daasebre Kwebu Ewusi VII, Paramount Chief of the Abeadze Traditional Area - who’s also the President of the Central Regional House of Chiefs, Mr Noble John Appiah, Managing Director of Metro Mass Transit Limited and Dr Justice Morkporkpor Yao Amegashie, former Chief Executive Officer, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA).
The investiture took place during the WARSOs Executive Committee Meeting at the Miatta Conference Center, Brookfields in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
The citation that followed the award read that Daasebre Kwebu Ewusi is a well-known Road Safety Advocate who is very committed to road safety improvement in his traditional area.
He founded the Nana Ewusi Road Safety Foundation, which is into the mobilization of funds and other resources for road safety training, advocacy and awareness creation programmes.
It said through the Foundation, Daasebre Kwebu Ewusi has significantly helped to increase awareness for best road safety practices in his traditional area and the Central Region in general.
The citation of Dr. Amegashie also read that he was instrumental in the transformation of the National Road Safety Committee and the Vehicle Examination and Licensing Division into the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority respectively as legal entities in 1999 by Acts of Parliament.
It said during his tenure of office as Chief Executive of the DVLA (2009 2013), he ensured the establishment of Computer Based Theory (CBT) Test as a means of improving the quality of drivers that are licensed to drive.
He also facilitated the development of the regulation for the operations of the Private Vehicle Test Stations (PVTS).
He has several publications to his credit including authorship of Safe Driving Rules of the Road Explained, Safe Driving Simplified, Safe Driving Simplified (with questions and answers), and The Vehicle Owner and the Driver and The Law and Conventions on Road Transport (unpublished manuscript), it said.
According to the citation Mr. Noble John Appiah, who is now the Managing Director of Metro Mass Transit Company Limited, has been on the frontline of road safety practice for over 30years.
Until 2013 he was Executive Director of the NRSC of Ghana for over a decade. During his tenure, Mr Appiah personified the NRSC as an organization, a product and a service.
He led the process to build the Commission into a very respectable, visible, proactive and data-led public agency with a handful of staff who reflected the vision of the Commission. The NRSC of Ghana diligently constructed under his leadership what has become known as the African and Ghanaian model at managing Road Safety.
It said the effort of this example under his leadership led to several study visits from contemporary organizations from Lesotho, Uganda, South Sudan, Zambia, Mali, among others; and the historic invitation to address the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly on Road Safety in 2012 on Ghana’s road safety management approach.
He led a team to manage a decline in Ghana's crash (accident) fatality rate from 78 deaths per 10,000 vehicles in 1999 to 17.9 deaths per 10,000 vehicles in 2011 it added.
WARSO was inaugurated on 8th May2008 under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) by the then President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr Muhammed Ibn Chambas.
The main goal of the Organization is to promote and reinforce road safety activities and practices in West Africa through effective management of road safety and traffic matters with a view to reducing road traffic crashes.
