23 Jun 2025

Traffic nearly came to a standstill Friday morning along A1 Road in Lobatse by the roundabout near the Botswana Geoscience Institute, where accident emergency services providers were performing a fatal road accident simulation exercise.

Lobatse assistant district commissioner, Mr Kabelo Ntopo said in an interview that the exercise was organised by the District Disaster Management Committee to simulate an emergency fatal accident situation in order to assess emergency teams’ response effectiveness, which included Emergency Medical Services, Botswana Police Services, Department of Fire Services and Botswana Defense Force emergency services. He highlighted that the exercise sought to enhance road accident preparedness in order to draw and put to action effective response plans, procedures and systems as part of emergency management processes.

“We do this every two years in order to make improvements where need be. Today we have identified resource gaps. We have also noticed that we must improve our coordination and collaboration as teams coming from different locations attending to a fatal road accident scenario,” he said and appreciated that different departments performed accordingly as their response times were within international standards though more could be done.

He however cautioned that members of the public had a tendency of taking photographs during such occurrences yet doing so was forbidden hence the public must be educated on what to do in such situations. Any loopholes to ensure that emergency services are served in the best possible way, much be closed, Mr Ntopo said.

The training was followed by an evaluation exercise, where members of the response teams consented on the need to improve communication. Additionally, they called for a centralised call system for the teams, to avoid making multiple calls to different departments, by those seeking assistance.

The teams also called for capacity building and additional resources such as transport and an accident emergency response vehicle equipped with all the necessary material including the jaws of life, to be able to extricate victims who would be trapped in vehicles. They also suggested that a police road accident investigator must always form part of the team, that being a standard emergency response operating procedure.

The simulation exercise involved a motor vehicle, which hit a tractor carrying seven farm workers in its rear load, who got ejected onto the road, resulting in one death and others severely injured. Passengers of the vehicle that hit the tractor also sustained severe injuries and were trapped inside their car that caught fire.

“My heart skipped a beat, I was really shocked when I saw people lying on the road with ambulance siren warning, the police and Botswana Defense Force attending to them. It looked so real until after I carefully looked and I realised that it was staged,” said a member of the public, a pedestrian, Ms Kgalalelo Mabaya breathing a sigh of relief. 

She was part of the crowd in the peripheries who had come to witness the exercise. She also appreciated that the training helped to sensitise the public, to always be alert on the road. ENDS