The Sunday News
Belinda Moyo/ Nigel Siziba, Sunday News Reporters
ARENEL Sweets and Biscuits has spent more than $30 000 in refurbishing a traffic training centre for children in Bulawayo as part of ensuring that children are taught about road rules at an early age.
The programme was done in conjunction with the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe. Arenel general manager sales director Mr Paulo Moyo said that as a company whose key customers are children they saw a need for the renovation and building of the Bulawayo North Traffic Training Centre for the benefit of their consumers.
“Our idea behind partnering with Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe is that we saw it necessary to make sure our key consumers are given a platform to learn about road safety so that they become safe road users,” he said.
The company built a learning classroom for the North Park Traffic Training Centre for children, drilled a borehole, built six toilets, renovated an office and added a tuck shop, erected a palisade fence, donated road signs and 20 bicycles for the training centre.
The training centre provides children with free knowledge about road signs, and to respect every road user. TSCZ managing director Mr Obio Chinyere applauded the contribution of the company towards reducing road traffic accidents. Mr Chinyere said it is important that everyone is aware of road signs as all people are road users.
“Most of the times people tend to forget about pedestrians especially motorists forgetting that everyone is a pedestrian, the moment they come out of their cars they become pedestrians. That is why as a council, it is upon us to make sure everyone gets the privilege to learn about road safety especially children, we want to catch them young so that they are good road users,” he said.
Mr Chinyere said they were targeting to teach children from 15 schools about road signs every week.
“We have two traffic training centres, one here in town and the other in Mpopoma which caters for high-density suburbs school,” he said.
