Speakers at the National Road safety Conference on Tuesday stressed on the need to establish a 'safe' mass transit to scale down the increasing road accidents. They observed that in the absence proper infrastructure, children have been victims of reckless driving.
They urged the decision makers to draw up plans for ensuring road safety on country's roads in general and city and province in particular so that every citizen could enjoy a sense of protection during travel and commuting. They demanded of the government to ensure committed funding to the road safety programme so that it could be carried out in line with experts' recommendations on set international rules.
These views came up from experts at a one-day conference organised by the Indus Motors Company Limited in collaboration with Sindh Education Foundation at a local hotel on Tuesday to mark the UN Global Road Safety Week being observed from April 23 to 29, 2007.
Speakers included: Parvaiz Ghias, CEO Indus Motor Company, Dr Rasheed Jooma, Director, Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Center, Aijaz Ali Khan, DG, Road Sector Development Directorate, Sindh Government, Anita Ghulam Ali, MD Sindh Education Foundation, Asad Jahangir, former IG Sindh, and DIG Traffic, Amanullah Ansari, WHO National Programme Officer, and Waseem Haider, Advisor to Sindh Chief Minister of Home Affairs.
Wasim Akhtar who addressed the concluding session of the conference. He was also the chief guest of the session in place of Governor Sindh, Dr Ishratul Ibad Khan. He suggested that helmet for motorcyclists should be made compulsory so that motorbike-riders could be more protected against road accidents.
He urged the traffic police department to implement helmet-related laws strictly which could only be made visible through the department efforts and hoped it would bring about a positive change in the society. Calling upon the stakeholders, he said that they should play their due role in strengthening the road safety culture in the country.
Other speakers pointed out that physically challenged people face serious road communication problems due to unavailability of proper road infrastructure including pedestrian bridges in the city.
They said that road safety audit was necessary to ensure road safety. They said that lack of bus-stands was the primary hurdle in the smooth implementation of traffic laws and safeguarding the public from road accidents. They suggested that bus-stands should be designed and located in a systematic manner, otherwise it had been causing serious problems.
They urged the government to establish pedestrian zones in cities of the province to allow a free pedestrian moment without any trouble. They said that traffic-effect study was important to streamline the vehicular traffic. They criticised that only few traffic engineers were in the country to implement the road safety in a proper way, which had badly effected the traffic system in the country.
They also said that road safety should be included in academic curriculum so that children could be acquainted with traffic laws and road safety codes in their early age.
Pertaining to healthcare sector's role, they said that regionalisation of trauma center would help recover the severe mentally injured in road accidents. They negated that concept of only few trauma centers should be set up in the cities.
Traffic system was discussed a major tool to enhance the road safety, experts said that traffic department should be provided with the latest equipment to ensure road safety.
They said that cases of road accident should be dealt at the traffic police stations instead of police stations, which would not only reduce time to get them early settled but also let the traffic official know how to improve their capacity of investigation and plans implementations.