THE Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) is concerned that the health sector spends about K3 billion annually to provide healthcare to road accident victims when this money could be channelled to developmental programmes if only people adhered to traffic rules.
RTSA executive director Zindaba Soko said that a lot of money is spent on attending to road traffic accidents and victims but that this money could be reduced if people adhered to traffic rules.
He said on Friday that RTSA has a mandate to save lives through adherence to traffic rules and that it will ensure this is done through road user education so that people can be aware about these rules.
Meanwhile, Mr Soko said the Agency will soon build a station in Petauke that will assist motorists access the Agency’s services such as road tax, car fitness, and driving licenses from the nearby towns.
He said currently, people have to travel to Chipata as the provincial capital to access these services.
And Chief Mpezeni of the Ngoni people is concerned with the increase in road traffic accidents involving public service vehicles adding that more needs to be done to ensure traffic rules are adhered to.
The traditional leader said from his palace at Laweni, that RTSA is doing its best to reduce road carnage and enforce traffic rules but that there was a growing concern about accidents involving public service vehicles or public buses.
He noted that public buses carry a lot of people and that when accidents happen many die at the same time and that these are people who could be very productive.
“These people (RTSA) do not tolerate nonsense, if they find you abrogating traffic rules they will not tolerate any nonsense from you,” he said.
Chief Mpezeni commended the Agency for its efforts in reducing carnage adding that it needs to steer its efforts and educate people on road use so that people can be more compliant.
Chief Mpezeni also noted that a lot of money which is channelled to the health sector to assist road accident victims could be used in other development efforts if people adhere to the simplest of traffic rules.
That is a necessary expenditure! What RTSA should be doing is having trained medics responding to accident scenes.These should be placed around ‘hot spots’ just like we’ve ‘Break down’ vehicles which respond faster than the police. We can’t have every ‘jack and jill’ pronouncing ‘victims’ at accident scenes.
SOKO AND GOVERNMENT YOU ARE GET TOO MUCH TAX ON ROAD WORK ON THE ROADS.
Motorists pay more than enough for that privilege even though its not enough as most motorists die at the accident scene due to delay in emergency getting to the scene especially if the accident happens on outskirts….the question you RATS executive director Zindaba should be asking yourselves is how can we reduce accidents and punish the culprits…introduce fast-track courts linked to city councils community service schemes so motorists whom are found wanting help councils remove and clean streets via payback schemes.