MEC for Community Safety and Transport Management in Bokone Bophirima, Gaoage Molapisi intensified road safety awareness for this year’s festive season through the Setsokotsane programme that was led by Premier Supra Mahumapelo in the Ramotshere Moiloa Municipality.

Molapisi interacted with taxi commuters and drivers at Zeerust taxi rank where he distributed pamphlets and led the road safety ambassadorship.

MEC said the awareness is to encourage safe road usage to reduce incidents and fatalities during the season. “We continue to experience high number of accidents and fatalities during this season and this leads to government losing billions of rands that could have been utilized in service delivery hence we are here to initiate a positive change on our roads caused by unbecoming attitude by road users.

We also call upon long distance drivers to take a rest in every two hours or 200km of driving because fatigue is one of the factors contributing immensely to fatalities,” said Molapisi who emphasized that the department will further intensify pedestrian safety awareness.

In their interaction with Molapisi, taxi operators and commuters shared their frustrations with MEC and informed him that they have been operating for more than 10 years without having a well structured taxi rank. The concerned operators said they have since started operating at the area on interim basis but to date they have lost hope from the municipality in building a proper rank.

They showed the MEC their facilities which included the toilets that are not working for ages and that is health hazardous. In his response, Molapisi said his department will engage with the municipality and further urged operators to work on ways of resolving challenges they are faced with through their taxi associations.

“We must work in an integrated manner to resolve these kind of challenges, I believe we share the common goal and it is important to partner in service delivery,” he said.

On the other hand, truck drivers traveling between Zeerust and Mahikeng felt the pinch of law enforcement when traffic authorities at the Zeerust weighbridge joined the Setsokotsane and ensured that all trucks passing through were compliant.

More than 100 trucks were weighed and traffic fines worth R2500 were issued in seven hours. About four trucks were found to beoverloaded and proper steps were taken to ensure that they get on the road with permisible loads.

MEC Molapisi called on truck owners to take the responsibility of ensuring that their trucks are not overloaded and sends a warning to those defaulters.

“Weighbridges are established and built as control measures to monitor truck overloading and we are aware that despite having them in the province, there are those chance takers who continue to carry excess weight but I must warn you that we will definitely catch up with you during this festive season and beyond.

We will not relent until there is no overloading on our roads and truck owners must take responsibility for ensuring that their vehicles are not overloaded from the point of origin up to its final destinations. At has to be a collective responsibility,” he said.

Molapisi said overloaded trucks damages roads and they also contribute to road incidents and fatalities.
-TDN
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