As part of efforts to reduce road traffic crashes in the country, the Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority on Wednesday 7th April, 2021 engaged strategic stakeholders in traffic management to undertake professional road safety audit in the country’s major roads to identify problem areas and come up with recommendations.
Addressing the multi-disciplinary team which comprises the Sierra Leone Roads Authority, the Sierra Leone Police and other key stakeholders at the Headquarters of the Sierra Leone Road Safety authority, the Executive Director of the Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority, Mr. Ibrahim Sannoh disclosed that the SLRSA as the government lead Agency on Road Safety had intention to undertake professional Road Safety Audit on some major roads in the country to identify and minimize future road accident occurrence.
The Executive Director pointed out that the proposed Road Safety Audit was in line with the government’s medium term national development plan (2019-2023).
The Executive Director described Road Safety Audit as a systematic and formal process of checking the Safety aspect of roads. He added that the objective of Road Safety Audit was to identify potential problems so that where possible design could be changed to eliminate or reduce them. He said Road Safety Audit follows the principle of “prevention is better than cure.”
The Director of Road Assets at the Sierra Leone Roads Authority Engineer Peter Komeh lauded the initiative of the Executive Director and pledged the support of the Director General of the SLRA. He called for the reintroduction of the National Traffic Management Committees to champion not only Road Safety Audit but other related issues on the road.
The Director of Traffic Management and Road Safety, Sierra Leone Police, Mr. Kapri Kamara, thanked the Executive Director for the introduction of Road Safety Audit in traffic management. He assured the Executive Director of the full co-operation of the Sierra Leone Police.
The meeting was facilitated by the SLRSA’s Estate Manager, Mr Michael Jaiga.
The Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority was established in 1996 to regulate co-ordinate development in the Road Transport Sector and implement Government Policy on Road Safety.
However, since its inception over 20 years ago the authority has never undertaken a single professional Road Safety Audit to advice government on challenges in some of the major roads in the country.
