THE Guyana Police Force’s (GPFs) Traffic Department, in observance of National Road Safety Week, held a church service on Sunday under the theme ‘Accidents Can Be Deadly, Use the Road Safely, Drive Defensively and Stay Alive’.

The service was held at the Police Officers’ Mess Annex and included the singing of worship choruses, selections from the Police String Band, scripture reading and a message from Force Chaplain, Reverend P. Doolichand.

Speaking to the media on the side, Guyana Road Safety Council (GRSC) Coordinator, Ramona Doorgen, said that the Road Safety Council continues its yearly collaboration with the GPF each November as the month is, unfortunately, infamous across the world as the most deadly month when it comes to road accidents.

“You find that people are actually hustling for Christmas, people are actually more in the mode of [trying] to make things happen because it’s the end of the year. So you find October-November people always, some way or the other, don’t pay attention and [get into accidents],” she said.

Doorgen added that, over the years, there have been improvements as the Road Safety Council and other governmental and non-governmental stakeholders work to curb the habit of reckless road use. “You might not see the improvement in road traffic crashes, but we have made improvement in a lot of areas,” she said.
“We’ve formed a strategy, we have a national plan, we have the vital data for the Ministry of Health. We worked on the alcohol consumption for communities with PAHO/WHO and a whole lot of other stuff,”

Meanwhile, Council Member, Eon Andrews said that the Road Safety Council is working along with the GPF to ensure that certain penalties are enacted and road safety instruments such as road signs are in place. This aside, he noted that more need to be done to educate the younger population about safe usage of the roadways.

“What is not good enough, it needs to be upgraded, especially in the education sector where you have to educate children and we are hoping too that we can have road safety being taught in schools as a special part of their curriculum because the kids need to learn. The older ones might be fixed in their ways, but we have to teach the young ones now,”

Andrews said. Following the service, the Council, in collaboration with the GPF, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, the Guyana Oil Company (GuyOil) and Teleperformance, painted the pedestrian crossings at the intersection of Camp and Robb Streets. Five schools around the GuyOil head office also saw their pedestrian crossings being repainted.