Prime Minister Raila Odinga will launch a road safety programme in Malaba next week. The African Road Safety Corridor Initiative, which will be unveiled at Malaba Township Primary School in Teso is aimed at ending road accidents along the highways.Teso North DC, Josephine Onunga said the initiative will provide an opportunity for all stakeholders to find a lasting solution to road carnage along the Northern Corridor, which has been blamed on truck drivers and boda boda cyclists.
Onunga said within her short stint as the area DC, she had come face to face with accidents caused by unending traffic jam arising from slow clearance of transit cargo by Kenya and Uganda Revenue Authorities.
The launch of the road safety programme comes in the wake of a report indicating that more than one million people die in road accidents around the world every year.
Out of the total list of casualties, about 70 percent occur in developing countries with 65 percent of the deaths being pedestrians and 35 per cent being children.
The report estimates that at least six million more will die and 60 million injured in the next 10 years in developing countries unless urgent action is taken. The study forecasts that by the year 2020, road accidents will be the third leading cause of deaths and disability around the world.
About one to three per cent of Kenya's GDP is spent on road accident victims, majority of whom are pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists. Developing countries currently lose more than $100 billion every year on road accidents.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment