The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
Frank Kimboy.
9 July 2009
Vice president Dr. Ali Mohamed Shein has urged all political and civic leaders to collaborate with experts and other professional who are concerned with the issue of road safety to come together, pool resources and efforts to confrot, and contain road carnage in the country.
Dr. Shein was speaking in Dar es Salaam yesterday during the official opening of three days conference on road safety in Africa. The conference is held in the country.
Vice presidents ordered all politician and civic leaders to make sure that prevention of road crashes is an important and recurring agenda among people at their respective locations.
"Road transport is by far the most popular mode of transport in this country and in deed this mode is the one that makes the most significant contribution to social and economic development to our nation," Dr. Shein Said.
The meeting brings together ministers, government officials and road safety activists across Africa to review the growing epidemic of road injuries and deaths in the continent.
Africa has the most dangerous roads in the world and according to a new report issued at the conference, Archbishop Desmond Tutu warns that road accident can become another killer epidemic on the scale of HIV/AIDS.
"This is predominately a killer of poor, it is the poorest communities that live alongside the fastest roads, it is the poorest children who have to negotiate the most dangerous routes to school," Archbishop Tutu said.
Archbishop Tutu also urged Africa Government and donor community to step up to meet the challenge brought by road accidents and commits to a decade of Action for road safety.
Speaking at the conference Minister for infrastructures, Shukuru Kawambwa, said for the past three years the number road accidents has been increasing and notably last years was the year with the huge increment were by 20,615 road accidents were reported resulting in 2905 deaths and 17,825 injuries.
"The situation (road accidents) in the country is very worse, it has reached an extent that 8 people are losing their lives while 48 are left with injuries everyday due to road accidents," the minister said.
The meeting, which is attended by delegates from all parts of the world including his highness prince Michael of Kent, preside the global meeting of ministers, which will be held in Moscow later this year to discuss and come up with world strategy to tackle road accidents.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Citizen. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
