19 Oct 2015

Debswana, G4 Consulting Engineers and road safety partners will hold a two-day road safety symposium targeting 350 participants at the end of this month in Gaborone.   

Speaking at a press briefing recently, the head of safety and sustainable development at Debswana, Mr Tefo Molosiwa said the symposium was aimed at stimulating the involvement of civil society, private companies and national and local governments in a multifaceted and integrated approach to fostering effective partnership on road safety countrywide.

He said the symposium intends to develop partnerships by bringing together all stakeholders to find innovative ways of supporting and improving road safety in Botswana.
“It will provide a platform for discussion on the various ways that road safety concerns can be addressed with a view to develop ongoing partnerships for practical road safety initiatives,” said Mr Molosiwa.

He said the expected outcome for the symposium was to have all stakeholders actively involved in an effective partnership on road safety initiatives as a way to ultimately reduce road traffic accidents, fatalities and traffic violations in Botswana by 50 per cent by 2020.

Mr Molosiwa added that the intended outcome was in line with both the Botswana National Road Safety Strategy and the UN Global Plan for the decade of action for road safety.

He said Botswana was committed to the decade of action and that the Botswana National Road Safety Strategy aligns with the objectives of the decade of action. He added that the  primary focus areas of the strategy was to have safer road users, vehicles, roads and better incident and trauma management.

Mr Molosiwa said this would  be achieved through integrated education and communication strategies, engineering interventions, enforcement strategies, improved emergency response systems, improvement of formation and knowledge base support and transformation and strengthening of the management of road safety

He said  the idea of a road safety symposium was started in the late 2014 as a legacy initiative of the Orapa workshop project.

“It was conceived after numerous ‘safety talk moments’ identified road safety as a critical risk to the project after seeing the report from the Anglo-Brazil initiative that reduced road fatalities by 70 per cent in one year,” said Mr Molosiwa.

He said the purpose of the symposium was that, given the number of reported fatalities and accidents by various forms of non-compliance to road traffic rules, Debswana in line with their Zero Harm aspirations found it necessary to support the Botswana National Road Safety Strategy 2011 to 2020 as well as United Nations initiative.

“Debswana has as part of the Orapa Workshops Project’s legacy partnered with various stakeholders to kick start a series of solutions to address road safety challenges in Botswana,” said Mr Molosiwa.

Stakeholders who attended the briefing welcomed the initiative, calling on other stakeholders to come on board. ENDS