Halt rising road carnage, RTSA urged

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 10:31:21 +0000

By SANDRA MACHIMA

THE Road Transport and Safety Agency must take action to stop the growing number of serious injuries and deaths on Zambia’s roads, Zambia Road Safety Trust chairman Daniel Mwamba has said.

“We want ambitious casualty reduction targets to be introduced to act as a driving force for the fight against road death and injury at the national level, increased investment in road infrastructure to develop a safe and sustainable road network and more resources assigned to road traffic police to ensure effective enforcement,” he said.

Mr Mwamba urged Government to support road crash victims by ensuring there was integrated and comprehensive measures and resources to alleviate suffering among road casualties.

He said he was deeply saddened by the accident in which 10 people died when a Mazhandu Family Service bus was involved in an accident with a truck on the Kabwe-Kapiri Mposhi stretch of the Great North Road on Tuesday morning.

“Road deaths and injuries cause horrendous suffering every day, and each day nine people face the unbearable news their loved one will never come home because they have been killed in a road crash,” Mr Mwamba said.

Mr Mwamba said the road agency had in the past five years presided over a situation in which road accident deaths had increased by over 100 percent.

He called for the owners of the bus to face manslaughter charges if they were found wanting.