By Lamin Njie
Assistant Information Officer, Ministry of Works
In a bid to improve road safety standards and to minimize accidents on the roads, the Ministry of Transport, Works and Infrastructure (MoTWI), in partnership with relevant stakeholders in the transport sector, will soon roll out a nation-wide road safety survey, starting with The Greater Banjul Area (GBA).
To implement this noble goal, on Saturday 18th July, 2020, a pre-test road safety survey was carried out around the busy Tipper Garage in Bakoteh. During this exercise, different categories of road users such as commercial drivers, private drivers, pedestrians, motorcyclists and Cyclists were interviewed as to their understanding of the importance of observing road safety rules and related matters.
Essa Drammeh, the Director of Planning at the Ministry of Transport, Works and Infrastructure, said basically, “we want to improve road safety situation in the country. We have developed a road safety policy which is embedded in the National Transport Policy, 2018/2027”.
According to him, a key recommendation in that policy was to improve road safety institutional management in The Gambia, by constituting a road safety working group, road safety committee and a road safety unit within the Ministry in the short term. He added that whilst the road safety committee will serve as the board, the road safety unit will serve as the secretariat for the road safety working group.
“Development of a road safety strategy for The Gambia was also a strong policy recommendation. And as such, a road safety strategy was developed for The Gambia with support from the Sub-Saharan Transport Policy Program. The strategy is now about to be implemented and a key step in this endeavor is the development of a communication strategy for the successful implementation of the strategy.
“So, the purpose of this survey is to help us develop the communication strategy. We have developed the questionnaires to see what are the key messages on road safety themes during our campaigns and sensitizations programs. This survey is basically within the Greater Banjul Area. But we will come up with more campaigns targeting the whole country,” he said. He further stated that his office will work with all the relevant stakeholders to conduct the activity and the mass media, communities and all relevant stakeholders would not be left out during the campaign and sensitization programs.
“We already have the road safety work plan for 2020 but it has been affected by Covid-19, but notwithstanding, after the survey, the sensitizations and implementations of various interventions will start,” he said.
