AS Guyana joined the world in commemorating the United Nations World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, some influential voices have made strident calls for safer roads, including charging of passengers in loud and overloaded busses.Sunday the Guyana National Road Safety Council (GNRSC) collaborated with the Guyana Police Force Traffic Department in a rally which began at the Kitty Seawall and ended at the Guyana Police Force Seawall Band Stand in Kingston, both in Georgetown, to observe the day set aside for remembrance of those killed on the roadways.
Hundreds of persons from various support groups also joined the rally. Awards in the form of trophies were distributed to Ministry of Public Health Peer Educators, the Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO) dream team, and a group of youths from West Coast Demerara and Mahaica, East Coast Demerara for their work in promoting road safety.
Addressing the occasion, Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson said the administration is doing all it can to ensuring better, safer roads, and has adopted a new approach in which sidewalks for pedestrian will be built along every newly-constructed public roadway.
Along with the construction of better roads, an increase in road-crossing signs, bus stops, and speed bumps are being placed in front of every school, all in an effort to ensure the safety of all road users. Notwithstanding all of this, road accidents seem unavoidable.
“I can build better roads, safer roads with money… I can put in as many sidewalks as possible, what we can’t get is our pedestrians using the sidewalks. We still have way too many road accidents in our country. No matter how much and how well we improve our road infrastructure, if we don’t improve our mentality… they will all be a wasted efforts,” he stated.
The Minister also answered a call made earlier by Mothers in Black for permission to erect road safety signs at various locations. He pointed out that the Ministry of Public Infrastructure has already begun work in this regard.
Big busses
He also disclosed that the Ministry has begun working on a proposal for the return of the big buses and granting of incentives to school children and the elderly to ensure safer travel.
“It is my intention to bring back the bigger buses on the longer routes. It is my hope that if we have the bigger, better, safer buses, carnage on the roads will be reduced.”
He later told the Chronicle that he is seeking to have a number of the 50 and 30 seater buses for long distance routes.
Meanwhile, Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan reiterated his call for all to take an individual approach towards road safety.
He said while the government is listening to the voices of the people who are lobbying against road deaths, youths have a role to play in ensuring safer roads.
GNRSC Executive Secretary Earl Lambert reminded that the United Nations designated day is observed every year in remembrance of the millions killed or injured in road accidents.
Charging passengers too
Lambert said the carnage on Guyana’s roadways is unacceptable, and everyone has a role to play in stopping it.
On that score, he called for passengers to be charged whenever a bus is overloaded and/or plays loud music.
“If you are going to charge a bus driver and leave out the passenger who would have been allowing that fool to drive that killer machine in that reckless manner, it means that we are not going to make progress. I support charging passengers in that bus and when people know that they will have to pay a fine I am certain that they will be the ones to stop the recklessness,” he said.
He also called for tighter measures to be put in place to prevent drivers from buying their licences.
Denise Dias of the Alicea’s Foundation and Mothers in Black said the mayhem on the road has joined family violence and other problems to “become a virus”.
“We hear, we read and we see. We witness heart-breaking events of lives lost and our children’s future destroyed within seconds. Road deaths and casualties are accelerating beyond the speed limits and no matter how much those who are supposedly in control and behind the wheel, we as a nation must take off our eye masks and ear masks and we have to do something,” she said.

By Shauna Jemmott