Retool NRSA to curb road fatalities — Amaliba

The Director-General of the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), Abraham Amaliba, has called for the retooling of the authority to facilitate the implementation of policies and programmes that would ensure safety on the road. 

He said although the authority had the mandate to implement interventions on road safety, inadequate funding had made it difficult to fully execute that mandate.

In that regard, he stressed the need for the Ministry of Finance to make adequate budgetary allocation to the NRSA to facilitate the delivery of its road safety initiatives.

"The deaths on our roads are increasing, and there is the need for action to be taken to bring the figures down.

We need more resources to do this, but we are constrained by resources.

The Finance Minister has indicated that allocations will be made in the next budget cycle for the authority; and we hope that this is done so that we can help to make our roads safe," he said.

Working visit

Mr Amaliba made the call when the Deputy Minister of Transport, Dorcas Affo-Toffey, paid a working visit to some agencies under the ministry, including the NRSA, the Ghana Railway Development Authority and the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Authority (DVLA) last Monday.

The deputy minister, who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Jomoro in the Western Region, was accompanied by a high-powered team of technocrats from the Transport ministry.

At each of the institutions, the deputy minister interacted with the management and top officials, urging them to reset their operations in line with the overall research agenda of the government.

Action on road safety

Already, 1937 people have been killed in road crashes as of August, this year.

This development is alarming as it is almost exceeding the annual average fatalities of 2000 people.

Against that backdrop, Mr Amaliba said there was the need to step up road safety interventions.

However, he said the lack of logistics, including vehicles, and inadequate funding, had been the bane of road safety in the country.

"We have some of the best human resources in the NRSA, but what we need is logistics and budgetary support to implement robust interventions," he stressed.

Assurance

The deputy minister said everything possible would be done to support the NRSA to perform its mandate.

She said in the reset agenda of the government, it was important to reset the road safety space.

"We all use the roads, and if the roads are not safe, no one is safe.

We will do our best to keep people safe on our roads," she said.

She said the bill on Okada had been approved by Cabinet and moved to Parliament. "I am a Member of Parliament, so when the House resumes, we will work on that bill," she said.

GRDA

The CEO of GRDA, Dr Frederick Appoh, said effort was being made to revive the country’s railway sector by completing abandoned projects, particularly, the  Accra-Tema railway line, Tema-Mpakana and the Western Railway line.

He said the 96.7-kilometre Tema-Mpakadan Railway Line project, which was commissioned in December last year was defective but had been worked on.

“That railway line was ceremonially commissioned, but technically defective, however, through hard work of the directors and support of the Minister of Transport, we managed to restore some of the defects.

The test run has been done and we are going to start the first proof of revenue service on Wednesday, October 1” he said.

Dr Appoh added that the Western railway line, which runs through key mining areas, would also be revived.

“The contractor returned to work on August 6, this year, after almost two years of abandoning work.

This will create opportunities for the people of the Western Region and I count on the Transport Ministry to support us to execute these projects," he said. 

DVLA initiatives

The CEO of the DVLA, Julius Neequaye Kotey, said the authority had leveraged technology to enhance service delivery.

For instance, he said over 12,000 drive from port (DP) stickers had been issued this year following the implementation of digital stickers technology. 

“We have also done registration of over 9,000 comprising over 4000 excavators at the ports of Tema and Takoradi and 5,000 in-land,” he said, adding that more registrations would be done to ensure that every excavator was fully registered and the tracking done by the appropriate authorities.