NRSC To Educate MMDAs On Road Carnage

Story: W.K. Adusu

Mrs. May Obiri-Yeboah, the Executive Director of National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), is hinting that as part of the Commission’s public sensitization programme geared towards reducing road carnage, her outfit would go after the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, MMDAs and their Coordinating Directors across the country with the education.

She told The Republic newspaper in Accra that the move is in collaboration with the Local Government Service Secretariat, to inform MMDAs on how they could incorporate it into the local government system.

“On this score, the Commission would start from the Southern and Northern sectors including Kumasi, Apam and other places with the sensitization”; she disclosed.

Mrs. Obiri-Yeboah hoped that with the education to all these persons, it would trickle down into their work departments and the transport sections in their course of building social centres - like schools, market centres and shopping malls systems would be put in to keep the safety of the people or users. 

It was said to make Ghana a country with the safest road transport system in Africa, the religious leaders need to be involved in the fight against the road accidents.

On that note, Mrs. May Obiri-Yeboah suggests in her opening remarks at the workshop held for religious bodies that there should be road safety day in the religious calendar.

She intimated that it looks as the road accidents in the country is now more than victims of ailments such as HIV-AIDS amongst others.

She further indicated that hospital beds across the country are taken over by these victims of the road accidents more than patients suffering from other ailments.

She, therefore, appeals to the Reverends, the Apostles, the Clergy as well as Imams to start, if not yet, the preaching on road crashes in their churches and mosques in order to help reduce the fatality. 

She noted that this could be done just as they preached peace before, during and after the Supreme Court election petition hearing. 

The clergy were reminded that safety is a shared responsibility, so it requires that all the religious bodies – Christians, Muslims, Traditionalists, Hindus etc join to organise sensitization in their churches or and mosques or during their outreach programmes to create the road safety awards among the congregants.

With this, the workshop realized the programme trigger the long awaiting positive attitudinal change towards road safety or crash amongst the people.

The clergy unanimously, lauded the move and came up with lots of suggestions that would inure to the success of the NRSC’s sensitization across the country.

In an interview with the Pastor T. Techie Ocran (DMin) of Men’s Ministry with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, has stated that “anybody who wants to be a friend of Jesus must be a friend to road safety”. With this, he said one could make a meaningful in-role in saving more innocent lives.

As a Pastor, Mr. Ocran said as representative of Jesus Christ, he preaches to ensure no life is perished; therefore, it behooves upon him to also save lives of the innocent so that he could continue to reach out to them with the goods news (i.e. the word of God).

In the light of this, he promised to help with the crusade according to road safety commission, since road carnage has no respect for persons.