Road Safety to be taught as Subject in Basic and Senior High Schools

Basic and senior high schools will now teach Road Safety and related issues as a subject, as part of a new curriculum that has been introduced by the Ghana Education Service (GES), Minister of Transport, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah, has revealed.

He said plans are far advanced for the new subject to be introduced as the National Road Safety Authority, an agency under the Ministry of Transport, and the Ministry of Education which has oversight responsibility over the GES, are effectively collaborating to bring finality to the program.

Road crashes, Mr. Asiamah noted, are health-related issues and must be given all the necessary attention that it deserves.

“The United Nations has defined road safety crashes as a health issue. I keep on saying that unfortunately if somebody contracts HIV if he takes good care himself, it may take him 20 or 40 years before he dies. But if a road accident occurs, about 40 or 50 people may lose their lives.

“So, road safety issues are not issues that we need to joke with it. So, the National Road Safety Authority in collaboration with the Ministry of Education is coming up with a curriculum to be taught from the primary schools to the Senior High School level for us to education our people to know more about safety,” he to participants at the Annual General Meeting of the West Africa Road Safety Organization (WARSO) on Thursday, September 19, 2019, in Accra.

The theme of the event was “Evaluating Road Safety Performance in West Africa under the Decade of Action for Road Safety – 2011 -2020”.

The Minister said since road safety has become a health issue both globally and regionally, it was important for the Government of Ghana to demonstrate the political will by formulating policies aimed at reducing road crashes.

“Global benchmarking, for example, show that an increase in political will for road safety translates into more advocacy for good behaviour and improvement in resource allocation for road actions. That way, our countries can adopt common approaches that address our concerns of vehicular safety, road infrastructure and awareness of all levels of road users,” he said.

He added: “As a demonstration for its commitment, the government realising the weak institutional role of National Road Safety Commission approved a proposal to transform the Commission into an Authority with an enhanced mandate to ensure compliance road safety measures procedures and guidelines. Further, the transformed agency has the mandate to impose sanctions in the form of administrative penalties for non-compliance. These reforms have been carried out by government to inject new energy into the fight against road traffic crashes.”

Despite the reforms, he said the country is still faced with the challenge of ‘Okada’ business, stressing that “when we make progress in other areas, cases of motorcycles and tricycles related casualties become a concern to government.”

The Executive Director of the National Road Safety Authority, Ing. May Obiri-Yeboah, on her part, said through collaboration, all the 15-member countries of WARSO have been able to establish lead agencies for road safety and develop strategies for the effective management for the road.

However, she said WARSO still has a very long way to go in the promotion of road safety in the sub-region as it suffers low-level implementation of some vital resolutions in member countries.

“Road crashes have been identified as a social-economic challenge that runs as one of the most pressing challenges facing most countries in West Africa today. The causes of high accident rate in West African countries and their associated consequences have a significant impact on the society which continues to hamper our socio-economic development and impact on our well-being,” she noted.

She was confident the number of injuries and fatalities could still be reduced and therefore called for effective collaboration to deal with the challenge at hand.