Road safety campaigns reduce deaths
Puma Energy’s road safety campaign for primary schools has helped reduce accidents and death among schoolchildren by 50 per cent since it was launched some four years ago.
Chief of Traffic Police Mohamed Mpinga says that there has been a noticeable ‘halving’ in the number of fatal accidents in schools where the campaign runs.
“That is why I am calling for more stakeholders to come forward and support the campaign of this kind … they are highly recommended,’’ Commander Mpinga said during the launch.
The Traffic Chief, however, came short of detailed statistics, only emphasising that the campaigns were important and should be rolled across the entire nation.
To date, the programme has already covered 33 schools and trained 39,000 children across the country, who have benefited from education on road safety.
Yesterday, Puma launched the road safety drawing competition for schools, which involves awareness training in 10 primary schools in Dar es Salaam and three in Kilimanjaro. The two regions will later compete.
Puma Tanzania’s General Manager, Mr Philippe Corsaletti, said school children were the most vulnera ble to road accidents, hence the dedication of the road safety awareness week to this generation.
“In doing so … children grow up with road safety knowledge acquired at a tender age … this is our first priority’’ said Mr Corsaletti, adding: “We have decided to focus specifically on the primary school children knowing that they are exposed to many road dangers.’’
The oil distribution firm said they have done some audit on the effectiveness of the training and realised that in all schools under the campaign, the safety awareness had improved remarkably.
Mr Tom Bishop, a Deputy Director of Amend, a non-governmental organisation working in the area of road safety, said: “ Our target is to reach all primary schools in the country with this programme.’’
Puma named the schools to be covered in this year’s campaign in Dar es Salaam schools as Diamond and Olympio from Ilala District, Mkwawa and Kigogo from Kinondoni, Buza and Amani from Temeke, Mbezi and Amani from Ubungo and Kibugumo and Kibada from Kigamboni.
Kilimanjaro schools will be named later. Through the campaign, Puma will conduct Road Safety training and repaint safety murals at all 12 primary schools which had also participated before.
In addition, it will instal safety infrastructure at Ungindoni Primary School, draw new murals at Oysterbay Primary School and repaint road safety murals at Mburahati and Bryceson primary schools, aiming at educating the drivers as well.
The kids will also take part in a drawing competition relating to road safety and the winner - plus the school - will be awarded