Geisha Kow­lessar

Mem­bers of the Strate­gic Traf­fic En­force­ment Project (Step) will meet with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams next week to fi­nalise a road safe­ty and ed­u­ca­tion­al plan which is ex­pect­ed to be launched in Oc­to­ber. Vice-chair­man of the Na­tion­al Road Safe­ty Coun­cil Brent Bat­son said yes­ter­day the plan was aimed at ed­u­cat­ing cit­i­zens while at the same time mak­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice more ef­fi­cient by equip­ping of­fi­cers with tools and re­sources to en­sure they could clamp down on er­rant dri­vers and by ex­ten­sion re­duce road facil­ties and ac­ci­dents.

Bat­son said Step would al­so in­clude a Dri­ving Un­der the In­flu­ence (DUI) Task Force as there were still many dri­vers who did not heed calls to have a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver. He al­so urged pas­sen­gers to buck­le up while in the back­seat. The full de­tails and ob­jec­tives of Step will be rolled out to Williams but a fi­nal cost is yet to be de­ter­mined.

"We are still wait­ing for cost list­ings from var­i­ous ven­dors from whom we would be sourc­ing equip­ment...Once this is com­plet­ed we would in­clude these costs in the over­all bud­get," Bat­son said. "The plan is more or less fi­nalised so it is a mat­ter of for­mal­ly ap­proach­ing the act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er and present him with the plan."

Step will form part of the High­way and Pa­trol Di­vi­sion and will be un­der the purview of As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in charge of Op­er­a­tional Sup­port Ter­ry Archibald. "The main pur­pose of Step is to cre­ate an elite traf­fic en­force­ment unit with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice... It's not just about is­su­ing tick­ets but it's a holis­tic ap­proach both for the pub­lic and for of­fi­cers," Bat­son said.

"We would al­so be mak­ing of­fi­cers aware of how they ought to be dri­ving po­lice ve­hi­cles be­cause they too need to be held ac­count­able." On the is­sue of le­gal­i­sa­tion for speed guns, Bat­son said that mat­ter was be­fore the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel. He said there were in­stances where of­fi­cers were us­ing stop watch­es as speed mea­sure­ment de­vices.

This, Bat­son added, must be stopped and the watch­es must be im­me­di­ate­ly up­grad­ed. He said to date the road fa­tal­i­ty fig­ure stood at 116 which rep­re­sent­ed a sev­en per cent in­crease for the same pe­ri­od last year. On June 5 this year, then Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj said Cab­i­net had ap­proved $5 mil­lion to launch an aware­ness cam­paign aimed at in­flu­enc­ing dri­vers' be­hav­iours.

Ma­haraj said dis­cus­sions were to be held with the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to im­ple­ment a dri­vers' ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme in schools. Pres­i­dent of Ar­rive Alive Sharon In­gle­field, how­ev­er, has ques­tioned the sta­tus of the cam­paign, say­ing too many lives were be­ing lost in the process.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, In­gle­field said she met with new Trans­port Min­is­ter Em­manuel George two weeks ago, dur­ing which the is­sue of the sta­tus of the cam­paign was raised. Say­ing there has been no def­i­nite time pe­ri­od set on when the cam­paign would be kicked off, In­gle­field ex­pressed her dis­ap­point­ment and called for more ac­tion.

"I am dev­as­tat­ed at the time it is tak­ing for pos­i­tive ac­tion. More and more fam­i­lies are be­ing af­fect­ed by the pain and bit­ter­ness at los­ing their loved ones," In­gle­field said. She said the ma­jor­i­ty of road ac­ci­dent vic­tims were bread­win­ners and with their deaths came ad­di­tion­al bur­den on their fam­i­lies.

"Their fam­i­lies are im­me­di­ate­ly thrown in­to pover­ty be­cause these peo­ple were the bread­win­ners and they are no longer around to pro­vide," she said. "We need more sup­port from the com­mu­ni­ties and we need more so­cial to as­sist these fam­i­lies."