Africa-Press – Botswana. Motorists have been urged to prepare for trips well on time to curb chances of road traffic accidents.
The call was made by Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA) Fund Maun branch Manager, Mr Cecil Mosojane at a social workers forum in Gumare on Friday.
He said most trips were caused by speeding because people undertook trips under pressure of time.
Mr Mosojane said as a result people even ignored fatigue as they tried to beat time to reach their destinations.
“Prepare a day before for a travel and take breaks in between to avoid fatigue and not rely on speed,” he said. “If an accident happens it is hard to stop an over speeding vehicle.”
Mr Mosojane said iIn the North West District only, 15 people have since died because of road accidents this year, compared to 12 lives in 2022.
Nationally, 331 number of people died in 2021, 337 in 2022 and 331 people this year. The deaths were recorded out of 226 fatal accidents in 2021, 259 in 2022 and 251 fatal accidents in 2023.
The Okavango District’s Acting Deputy District Commissioner, Ms Tumelo Chibua, said that MVA did a significant job in assisting road traffic accident victims through the ‘loss of support fund’ which mainly assisted dependents.
Ms Chibua said that social workers were therefore important stakeholders to MVA as they helped in identifying the dependents through their assessment.
The MVA Case Manager-welfare from head office, Ms Buyani Chidoda, said their organization promoted road safety and injury prevention hence negligent parties in road accidents were offered limited assistance.
She said the loss of support benefit was eligible to minors until they reached 21-years-old.
Ms Chidoda noted that men died in higher numbers in accidents as compared to women leaving dependents behind.
She said issues of paternity of beneficiaries arose in some cases where loss of support benefit was to apply therefore said the role of social workers was important in such instances. She also said there were challenges of inadequate rehabilitation facilities, specialty in Botswana.
The other challenge, she said, was that some victims relied on caregivers who were compensated by MVA, saying the challenge was that some caregivers took advance payments and abandoned the victims.
The workshop was attended by social workers from villages under Okavango District Council and other stakeholders such as health and education workers.
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