As part of the 2013 Easter Arrive Alive Campaign Launch, the Eastern Cape Department of Transport held a cleansing ceremony at Kubusi Bridge in Stutterheim on 15 March 2013.
The Department led by MEC Thandiswa Marawu was joined by the Moral Regeneration Movement leaders, Councillors of Amahlathi Municipality, Amathole District Municipality, Traditional Leaders and Inter-faith structures in a bit to curb road carnages in this area, where a number of fatal accidents have taken place.
In delivering her speech MEC Marawu expressed a need to turn to the Almighty for His divine intervention in order to reduce road carnage.
“Since the introduction of the Arrive Alive Campaign by the democratic government, we have tried all our best methods to deal with road carnage at a strategic and tactical level. We have further reached out to communities through various innovative ways in an effort to make road safety everybody’s business,” said MEC.
“We have now realised that the time has come for us to turn to the Almighty for His divine intervention as we remain hopeful that through His grace and mercy, we shall overcome this scourge.
As we do that, we further encourage our cultural activists to work with us in order to appease our ancestors to join forces with us to protect our people from unnecessary deaths on our roads.”
Outlining the plan for the festive season, MEC Marawu said "Our officers are mandated to stop and screen 85 000 vehicles per month, with each officer expected to stop and check a minimum of 15 vehicles per eight-hour shift."
During this period, we expect our officers to:
- conduct high visibility patrols
- provide an efficient emergency response to road users
- provide traffic law enforcement and traffic control.
The MEC further added that the department will work hard to promote road traffic safety in general throughout the province in order to effect a reduction in road accidents, fatalities and injuries as well as combating road traffic offences by means of a multi-disciplinary “zero tolerance” approach.
We also believe that road safety education and awareness programmes should be a strong feature of our plans, she added.
As a result, this season, an extra-ordinary approach has been adopted which is characterised by:
- community and multi-stakeholder mobilisation
- improved traffic law enforcement measures
- increased road safety awareness
- increase public participation through our customer care centre toll free number 0800 644 644.
