Road safety agencies need muscles, teeth: AG
Road safety agencies cannot perform capably because they are poorly resourced, with the Road Development Authority (RDA) even unable to carry out its safety audit for two years due to a lack of engineers.
This is one of several worrying findings in a just-published report on road safety in 2016-17 released by the Auditor-General.
It comes, ironically, as the new year marks the end of a so-called decade of action for road safety – a United Nations declaration signed by Sri Lanka.
The powers and physical and human resources available to the National Council for Road Safety (NCRS) are insufficient, the Auditor-General’s report, released last month, says.
Although the NCRS had the duty of establishing a database of road accidents a traffic police database is not linked to the council, the Department of Motor Traffic, the Ministry of Health or insurance companies, the report points out.
Trained engineers were not available at present in the RDA, which meant the authority had not been able to carry out a road safety audit for 2016-17.
The lack of engineers meant that road engineering faults that had caused numerous accidents had not been rectified.
Lack of personnel meant there was insufficient checking of the running condition of school vans, inadequate lighting systems on the A1, A8 and A33 roads, and no fixing of unprotected railway crossings.
There were too few people to attend to the cancellation of registrations of vehicles no longer in use, or to renew approval for vehicles that had previously been identified as unfit for the roads but where defects had since been rectified.
In the case of accidents, there were inadequate resources or personnel required to deal with accident victims, and substandard ambulance facilities, the AuditorGeneral said.
The report quotes recommendations made by a parliamentary special committee report on the alarming rise in road accidents.
The committee said the NCRS should conduct research and field inspections on road safety and accidents to find solutions and that a training unit be set up in Traffic Police Headquarters bring about higher standards of traffic law enforcement and accident investigation.
It was observed that 72 per cent of the police officers attached to the Traffic Division had not followed the Traffic Management course.
The Auditor-General’s report says a corridor must be included in any highway construction plan to accommodate electricity, telephone and water supply service lines. Existing power, telephone and water supply lines should be removed and new ones laid underground or parallel to the roads, especially in urban areas.
Information obtained from police revealed that there were 109 sites around the country where badly-placed electricity and telephone poles had created at least 14 accidents.
The report said police should be equipped with fast highway patrol cars, motorcycles with radio communication equipment, equipment for drink-driving tests and cameras to catch offenders in the act of violating traffic laws.
Pointing to the high number of accidents involving private vehicles carrying schoolchildren, the report stated that police bore responsibility for providing security for schoolchildren on the roads.
The Ministry of Health was drawn into the Auditor-General’s report with criticism made of the inadequacy of shock treatment, orthopedic, neurosurgery and blood bank facilities in hospitals for road accident victims. There should be more doctors and nurses recruited to attend to victims, the report said.