National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) has partnered with Bamburi Cement to help reduce number of accidents along the Northern Corridor.
Speaking in Machakos while marking the 12th Annual Road Safety Campaign, Bamburi Cement Group Managing Director Seddiq Hassani said since inception of the road safety program by Bamburi Cement in 2006, at least 1500 drivers with annual refresher and 6000 bodaboda operators have been trained.
“Sustainability drives our operations every day and we care about the communities we operate around. As a sign of our commitment, we started a Road Safety program that has run for the last 12 years and annually we train 1500 drivers, 500 Motorcyclists and other road users on road safety and defensive driving,” said Hassani.
“In 2018, the Bamburi subcontracted drivers covered a total of 20 Million kilometers in the country, with zero fatalities,” added Hassani.
Speaking during the event , NTSA Director General Francis Meja said heavy commercial vehicles have overtaken PSV industry in terms of the leading cause of crashes on our highways.
“So it is a call for all of us who are in that sector that we really need to come together, put our heads together and create a movement that will champion road safety, and there is every reason to do that,” said Meja.
Meja said they will be coming up with regulations to help regulate heavy commercial vehicles to help improve the sector.
“As a sector we can all agree that heavy commercial vehicles have not been under any form of regulations,” said Meja.
The NTSA boss said that the regulations will be focusing on issues to do with drivers i.e what qualifications they need, what kind of training they require etc.
“A driver is a very critical person in your business, let us value them, give them good working conditions, encourage them so that when they are driving on the way, they are settled.
Bright Oywayo, a road accident survivor called for more collaboration amongst the private and public entities in the road safety management space.
“Prevention of road accidents and post-crash support is not a monopoly. To achieve more impact stakeholders should not operate in silos but work closely together.” said Bright.
