The National Road Safety Authority is working with stakeholders to regularise the activities of shuttles for private schools.
The Director for Regulations, Inspection and Compliance at the Authority, Kwame Kodua Atuahene, says the objective is to limit road crashes involving school children.
He spoke to the media during a day’s workshop with the road safety officers from Ashanti and Bono Regions.
Last year, four pupils lost their lives in road accidents involving their school buses in the Ahafo Region. Other sustained injuries.
Similar incidents happened in Kumasi. In one instance, 14 pupils were hospitalized.
To avoid such accidents, the National Road Safety Authority is scaling up activities involving shuttle services to minimize the associated risks.
The Director for Regulations, Inspection and Compliance at the Authority, Kwame Kodua Atuahene, says collaboration with the National School Inspectorate authority will ensure schools that run bus services are properly regularized by the National Road Safety Authority.
“Last year we registered about 180 of such schools in Ashanti Region to properly regulate them; we will ensure their vehicles are in good conditions, drivers are well trained, it doesn’t matter you are licensed, the mindset of driving people on Kumasi-Accra highway maybe quite different from driving kids in traffic,” he observed.
To manage the risk associated with the operations of school shuttles, the Road Safety Authority has planned a periodic training for the drivers and their assistants to keep the kids save.
Mr. Atuahene says discussions which started last year will be scaled up to other regions this year.
“We don’t want to wait until we hear accident involving 10 school buses before we act, we need to be proactive to deal with the situation,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Road Safety Authority has been engaging safety officers at various terminals in the Ashanti, Ahafo and Bono regions to build their capacity.
“Safety officers at lorry terminal have a duty to ensure the roadworthiness of vehicles within their jurisdiction, he is to ensure that, the vehicle designated for a trip is safe, the driver is qualified before the journey start,” he noted.