Road safety education programme launched

The Road Sector Development Directorate (RSDD) and Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) have launched a road safety education program in Sindh.
An announcement here on, Wednesday said that the road sector development directorate, an integral component of the works and services department, government of Sindh, and the SEF collaborated their expertise to begin work on a pioneering road safety education program (Rsep) in Sindh.
It said that the program has been launched through a series of interactive workshops for local government officials in the Dadu, Larkana and Khairpur districts of Sindh. The workshop in the three focused districts of the road safety education programme invited more than 100 local government officials.
The road safety education program (Rsep) seeks to enhance awareness about the basic principals of road safety in 100 government and community-based schools and stakeholders across Sindh.
The project will build capacity of schoolteachers for teaching road safety by developing curriculum materials and becoming master trainers for road safety education. The program is being implemented in schools during the 1 year stretching from August 2006 to July 2007. The workshop in Dadu was chaired by the district's EDO Rasool Bux Shah, and the Chairman Learning and Education Society, Hakim Ali Shah Bukhari.
Both were of the opinion that the project's effectiveness lies in the fact that it focuses on imparting valuable education to children, the most vulnerable group when it comes to road casualties and accidents.
The event in Khairpur, chaired by the district's EDO Mohammad Azam Memon, also lauded the efforts of RSDD and SEF in highlighting an issue that was the cause of several injuries and deaths not just to children but people of all ages.
He disclosed during the workshop that his own son was a victim of a road accident, which rendered him severely injured. The concluding event in Khairpur was the biggest success of all.
The District Co-ordinating Officer, Qazi Shahid Parvez, was all praises for the event, under his supervision; the event initiated a rich dialogue between all government department officials that were invited.
The group of participants, which also included the SP National Police, Shaukat Ali Jatoi, spoke at length of the basic facilities that were mandatory for safe roads and proper traffic behaviour.
These included recommendations ranging from cheap helmets for cyclists to research and monitoring cells exclusively for observing the number and nature of traffic accidents.
Local government officials from various departments including education, traffic and highway authority health and emergency services and media were also present on the occasion. A working session was also held in which targeted schools for project implementations were mapped and add networks, emergency services and major issues that children and elders faces while using roads in the area were identified and discussed.
Roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder group towards surging road safety were shared with all the participants and an agreement was also signed between SEF and district government, The workshops were carried out with the intention that engaging local government officials in the project will substantiate the road safety education program for children and will help in channelling more resources and efforts towards the initiative.
A range of activities will be under taken, as part of the awareness and advocacy campaign for the Road Safety Education Program including trainings for teachers and school management bodies, provision of road safety resources for children and provincial level seminars.