The Minister of Works and Transport John Mutorwa says authorities are aware of a funding gap in road safety and called for innovative financing ways to achieve the objectives of the Decade of Action Strategy.
Minister Mutorwa warned that the implementation of the road safety Decade of Action Strategy will not be without constraints related to funding and land use planning.
“To ensure funding sustainability, Cabinet has already approved additional funding streams for road safety that are yet to be activated through the envisaged Road Safety Management Bill,” Mutorwa said, while speaking at the 8th National Road Safety Council (NRSC) conference underway at Otjiwarongo.
Pending the enactment of the management bill, Mutorwa called upon the NRSC, in conjunction with his Ministry, that of Mines and Energy as well as Finance and Public Enterprises, to find innovative ways through which road safety would be equitably funded, to enable the attainment of the objective of the Decade of Action Strategy.
Stakeholders are reviewing and laying strategies towards the rollout of the second 2021-2030 Decade of Action for Road Safety, which seeks to achieve zero death and injuries on national roads by 2020. It was adopted in 2020 to deploy a safe system approach as the model that provides the most effective and efficient management amenities.
“I acknowledge however that the introduction of a new system in any environment, may not be easy sailing. In most cases, such experimental initiatives require tailor-made adjustments and painful domestication before positive results can be attained, hence it will require discipline for all of us to stay the course until all elements of the system are fully understood and effectively put into practice,” Mutorwa advised.
In tackling these challenges, Mutorwa suggested that there is a need for NRSC to ensure that all road safety stakeholders are on board and that the implementation of the national annual action plan is carried out interactively and supported by accurate and impeccable data.
“The performance of both programmes, projects, and initiatives must be routinely assessed and the findings used to inform the calibration of the next round of planning. The planning circle and the tentative targets provided in the second Decade of Action provide a useful framework in this regard,” he reiterated.
Through enhanced safety efforts, the country recorded a 42% reduction in fatalities on its national road over the past period of December 2022 and January in relation to 2021, a milestone described by NRSC Chairperson Eliphas Owos-Oab, as brought by high-level visibility of traffic officers at strategic locations in towns and highways.
He said it is because of these strides that Namibia has been recognised for its trailblazing leadership in the ratification of the African Road Safety Charter and has been conferred the Kofi Annan Road Safety Award.
“The award is monumental in the country’s road safety management as it showcases what can be achieved through hard work and determination. What lies ahead is for Namibia to religiously put the aspirations of the African Road Safety Charter into practice,” Owos-Oab said.
He, therefore, lobbied for more support and involvement of private sector organisations in the field of road safety as previous efforts turned out to be very valuable.
