Take road safety seriously — students advised
The National Roads Safety Commission (NRSC) has said 358 children and young adults below 18 years were killed in accidents last year.
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The number was made up of 195 males and 163 females.
Consequently, the Manager in Charge of Planning and Programmes of the NRSC, Ms Catherine Hamilton has advised students across the country to make their safety on the roads key as they go to school and return home.
That, she said, would ensure that they were not knocked down by vehicles or got involved in other road traffic accidents.
In an interview with the Junior Graphic, Ms Hamilton said the commission had taken the issue of road safety among students very seriously and because of that the commission in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service (GES) had come out with road safety books for basic schools.
In addition, she said, there were teacher manuals and textbooks for road safety education in schools.
“Road safety is being taught in the basic schools now so that when children grow up it would become part of their lives,” she said.
Ms Hamilton said apart from that all School Health Educational Programme (SHEP) Coordinators had been trained on road safety issues.
The NRSC, she said, would check from the schools to see if they were teaching road safety in the schools.
She said durbars were also held to make the students aware of what to do to be safe while they used the roads.
Ms Hamilton charged parents not to leave their children in the care of older siblings to walk along busy streets to and from school.
Moreover, she said, parent-teacher-associations (PTAs) should get traffic wardens to guide children to cross the roads.
“We should all be interested in road safety, it is these children who would be the future leaders,” she added.
