By BAKANG MOKTO
23 December 2024- Zimbabwean driver (32), who is facing two charges, briefly appeared in Brits Magistrate’s Court on Monday. This follows an attempt to bribe a North West Provincial Traffic Officer upon his arrest for an alleged drunken driving.
It is alleged that the accused tried to bribe a Traffic Officer with a R100 when arrested for drunk driving. He is allegedly one of the 941 drivers arrested for drunk driving throughout the country.
The North West MEC for Community Safety and Transport Management, Wessels Morweng said about 30 drivers were arrested in the Brits CBD and surrounding areas of Mothotlung, Letlhabile and Mmakau over the weekend. Morweng said drunk driving has been identified as one of the major contributors of fatal crashes.
“As of the beginning of the festive season, the province has recorded 36 fatalities from 31 crashes. This is 7% of the 512 fatalities in the Republic for the weekend leading to Christmas.
“We appreciate the work of the North West Provincial Traffic Officers since the beginning of the festive period. The traffic officers must continue to do their work diligently and all forms of traffic violations will be severely punished on all provincial routes,” he said.
Morweng further said these crashes are causing them a lot of pain and they continue to lose beloved ones due to avoidable accidents. He added that this also costs the state millions of rands.
“We will not allow any drunken driver on our roads as this has recently been identified as one of the major contributing factors to crashes. Any contravention of any traffic statute will be met with harsh punishment.
“Anyone found behind the wheel while intoxicated will be locked up. When we activated the Provincial Road Safety Campaign with the North West Premier, Lazarus Mokgosi a week ago, we also launched a Mobile Alcohol Evidence Centre,” said Morweng.
He said the State-of-the-Art facility was donated by the South African Breweries (SAB) and will expedite detection and processing analysis of drunk driving incidents on the provincial roads.
The Guardian 