Eastern Cape's road safety campaign kicks off

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Pretoria - The Eastern Cape's Arrive Alive Road Safety Campaign has kicked off with increased law enforcement on the province's roads ahead of the Easter weekend.

As part of the campaign, more than 500 municipal traffic officers, assisted by members of the South African Police Service and the South African National Defence Force, will be deployed throughout the province to ensure smooth flow of traffic throughout the weekend.

Launching the campaign on Monday, Transport MEC Gloria Barry said the officers would focus on driver fitness, overloading, vehicle fitness, and seat belts.

"We have already started with a law enforcement programme focusing on buses, which resulted into the suspension of close to 100 buses on our roads. We have further prepared to operate 24 hours a day through the deployment of a roving Special Operations Task Team."

On Wednesday the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality will launch its Arrive Alive Road Safety Campaign.

Spokesperson for the municipalities Community Safety Department, Console Tleane said the department had put together a comprehensive strategy to deal with the expected increases in traffic flow.

Mr Tleane said high visibility and effective law enforcement would ensure there were no major accidents on the roads as well as a helicopter which will assist in vehicle counts, monitoring accidents and all criminal activities.

A Roadside Traffic Camp, with a Joint Operations Centre, will be established at the Wallmannsthal Interchange to reduce response time to major incidents and accidents consisting of all the relevant role players. It will be operational from Wednesday.

The North West province was expected to launch its Arrive Alive campaign on Tuesday.