Road Safety Campaign Yields Less Fruit

The Ministry of Transport is on a permanent campaign to keep highways less-risky for users. This time around, there are no more parades or media announcements on road safety campaigns in the country.

Transport officials say they have embarked on a permanent but "silent" strategy to clean the road sector of factors that can possibly render highways dangerous to human lives. That is why the "Axe of Damascus" has being falling on certain inter-urban transport agencies, driving schools and drivers whose practices jeopardise government's efforts to make road insecurity a thing of the past. But observers say much is still to be done as far as road safety measures are concerned given that one scarcely sees road safety agents along major roads in the country.

Although many say road safety campaigns seem to dwindle into oblivion particularly during this holiday because of the limited or non-existence of road safety agents along certain roads in the country, the Director of Land Transport at the Ministry of Transport, Zacharie Ngoumbe, says whatever people think or say, the fact is that road safety campaigns have become permanent activities more than ever at the ministry and not something meant for specific periods as it was the case before. As such, road safety agents no longer wait for periods such as end-of-year, back-to-school or holidays, when it is believed that the highways are very busy, to carry out campaigns on road safety measures. That is why Zacharie Ngoumbe says during this current holiday, the Ministry of Transport will continue with the measures already taken to make highways safer for movement.

Besides the usual sensitisation of road users on the importance of being attentive on the highway, Zacharie Ngoumbe noted that the Ministry of Transport has been working alongside forces of Law and Order to track down those who do not conform with the roadworthiness standards in the country. It is within this backdrop that three inter-urban traveling agencies in Yaounde were recently called to conform to the laws regulating the sector within two months or be shut-down by the Ministry of Transport. In a bid to regulate the functioning of driving schools, officials from the Ministry of Transport say 102 driving schools in Yaounde and 153 in Douala have been ordered to regulate the manner in which they operate else their candidates will not be accepted during national driving school examinations.