Eastern Cape MEC for Transport Thandiswa Marawu has called upon religious leaders to help government through soliciting divine intervention to deal with road accidents.
MEC Marawu was addressing the Eastern Cape Council of Churches (ECCC) and other churches who are not affiliated to the ECCC during a prayer week at the Orient Theatre in East London on 12 September 2012.
The initiative organised by TruFM seeks to revive the spirituality and to seek divine intervention to reclaim integrity and dignity of the Eastern Cape province.
“As the Eastern Cape Department of Transport, we highly appreciate this initiative, which augurs well with our Decade of Action Campaign for Road Safety 2011 – 2020, which is a United Nations campaign that seeks to make road safety a global agenda”, said MEC Marawu.
Addressing the prayer meeting, MEC Marawu said “we have exhausted all avenues to curb road fatalities but it is clear to me that we have committed an awful sin to God and we are being punished for that when we have the following statistics:
- The average annual number of fatalities on South African roads is 14 000
- The average annual number of fatal crashes on our roads is 11 000
- Poor human behaviour remains the largest contributor to fatalities
- High Speed is still a problem
- Drunken driving is still a problem and 42% of those tested for alcohol are women and 58% are men
- 40% of Eastern Cape road accidents involve pedestrians
- 80% of the road fatalities involved adult males aged between 19 and 34 years
- The majority of passengers, who die on our roads are female as they mostly rely on public transport.
- N2 between East London and Kokstad, N6 between East London and Aliwal North and R61 have been identified as some of the most dangerous roads in the country.
‘We appreciate the idea of calling upon the Almighty and implore for His divine intervention as we are convinced that God will help us to emerge with a lasting solution to the scourge of road carnage in this province,” she added.
MEC Marawu also took a swipe at Traffic officers who accept bribes from motorists saying if they continue to be on the contrary side of the law they must be fully aware that they contribute to these road fatalities.
“Not all Traffic officers engage in such a conduct that is why it then becomes imperative for all of us to support our traffic officers in order to motivate them to adhere to the Traffic Officers’ Oath, which they made when they joined their noble profession to serve mankind,” said Marawu.
The department has a contingent of 1 123 provincial and municipal traffic officers is playing its role through the implementation of the National Rolling Enforcement Plan, which is locally known as Operation Asihleki. They are expected to stop and screen 85 000 vehicles per month. Each officer is expected to stop and check a minimum of 15 vehicles per eight-hour shift.
