Africa-Press – Tanzania. Stakeholders have advised the establishment of road safety audit (RSA) to control and monitor road safety. The aim is to prevent road crashes and their impacts on the country’s economy.
RSA is defined as the formal safety performance examination of an existing or future road or intersection by an independent, multidisciplinary team.
“We must introduce RSA to coordinate road safety matters like the causes of crashes and make road safety the concern of all and not leave everything to the traffic police department alone,” said Mr Henry Bantu, the chairman of SafeSpeed Foundation, a nongovernmental organisation that advocates road safety.
He said all matters related to road safety were left to the traffic police department and this was causing problems for lack of enough personnel to contain road accidents. He noted that besides causing deaths, temporal or perpetual deformities to survivors, road accidents also caused damage to property and affected the country’s economy.
“Road accidents are caused by a number of things such as human error, bad roads, driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and recklessness. We need to have a top organ like RSA with powers to make a difference in road safety,” Mr Bantu told ‘Daily News’ in Dar es Salaam recently.
He explained that the traffic police to supervise, control and give statistics on the causes of crashes while they lacked enough personnel was not an effective way of dealing with road fatalities.
Recently, Minister for Home Affairs George Simbachawene said statistics of road crashes showed that there were 2,701 crashes in 2019 alone due to reckless driving, speedy driving under the influence of alcohol and defective vehicles.
Surveys show that children and the youth are more at risk when it comes to road crashes. This is not only limited to Tanzania, it also was a problem in other parts of the world, according to World Health Organisation (WHO).
However, Mr Bantu appealed to the entire community and commended the best ways of ending road safety, including RSA. “If we want to effectively prevent road accidents, every individual, from parents to children, students to teachers and the like must take part in this.
Meanwhile, proposed tax reduction in alcoholic drinks and road traffic fines has been described to be deadly and of negative consequences for the nation’s economy, with various stakeholders calling the National Assembly to scrutinise it before passing it.
During national budget debate for the 2021/22 fiscal year, Minister for Finance, Dr Mwigulu Nchemba, among other things, proposed a tax reduction in beer brewed using locally malted barley from 765/- to 620/- per litre.
The minister also proposed a reduction in fines involving commercial rickshaws and motorcycles to 10,000/- only from the current 30,000/- per traffic offence.
However, Ms Sopha Kombo, the chairperson of the Board of Tanzania Network Against Alcoholic Consumption (TAAnet) warned that if the minister’s propels were endorsed by the Parliament, they would be have detrimental effects on the economy and on the people in general.
“More Tanzanians, especially the youth and even children, will indulge in drunkenness as liquor will be available at affordable prices. This will cause deaths, failure to work due to excessive consumption and will trigger domestic and gender-based violence in the country.”
She said if people were allowed to access beer or liquor at affordable prices, the government would incur more costs of treating patients and more alcohol consumption would also cause the prevalence of non-communicable diseases like cancer, heart complications and amnesia, which would cost a lot to be treated.
For his part, Mr Paschal Sylvester, Executive Director of Building Inclusive Society Tanzania Organisation (BISTO), said if alcohol was to be made available and affordable, amidst traffic offence fine reduction, road crash victims and deaths would increase, a move which is not healthy to Tanzania’s economy and welfare.
“Commercial rickshaw drivers and motorcyclists are known for their incorrigible nature. They do not obey traffic rules and road signs. If we reduce fines and reduce alcoholic drink prices, then more road injuries and deaths will be regular and this will kill the economy. Members of Parliament must think twice before endorsing such proposals.”
