The Sunday News
Tendai Bhebe, Sunday News Reporter
THE Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe is expected to host the sixth edition of the Road Safety Journalistic Awards on 1 February as a way of encouraging journalists to increase media coverage about road safety in the country.
In an interview, TSCZ information, communication and technical manager Mr Tatenda Chinoda said journalists should cover more stories on the suffering of people that lose breadwinners through traffic disasters.
“The current coverage of journalists on road safety issues is largely at the surface and they are not going in-depth when covering issues on traffic safety. We want them to go deeper, by reflecting on the suffering and trauma faced by people who lose breadwinners on the highway through these road accidents.
“As we gear towards vision 2030 we are currently working on the Transitional Stabilisation Programme.
This programme is to help us to find out the impact of the road traffic injury and what it does to an individual. So stretching on the surface won’t be able to reflect and inform the general populace about these impacts of traffic injuries,” said Mr Chinoda.
He said the aim of these awards was to encourage journalists to reflect on the misery that people face after traffic accidents.
Mr Chinoda said during the festive season the council embarked on road safety campaigns countrywide with the aim of reducing traffic accidents and deaths.
“In terms of the festive season campaigns we carried out from 15 December to 5 January we had quite a number of integrated road safety marketing strategies through sms campaign which is still rolling because people don’t drive during holidays only.
“We had 20 educational roadblock teams on 20 national highways, we were campaigning to tame the traffic jungle and the theme was “save lives slow down” directed to both the driver and the passenger. We also had social media campaigns with CBZ bank where we are trying to make our twitter handle reach out to people who are so much in love with social media and it is a convenient way of conveying education,” he said.
Mr Chinoda said road safety campaigns were an everyday issue although there is a tendency to concentrate them towards the holidays because the volume of traffic would be very high.
He said people should observe road rules and regulations at all times so as to promote safety and reduce road accident deaths in the country.
@TendaiBhebe
