Merger to help motorists
Director of the Department of Road Transport and Safety Services James Chirwa says the merger of the National Road Safety Council of Malawi (NRSCM) and Road Traffic Directorate of Malawi will help motorists save time because officials of the two institutions will be dealing with road safety cases at one place.
The Malawi government is finalising the merger of the two institutions to create an active lead agency to handle all road safety matters at one place unlike in the past when there was fragmentation and duplication of Road Safety work.
In an interview in Lilongwe on Thursday, Chirwa said the process of merging the two bodies though ongoing, is almost finalised.
“I am very optimistic that by the end of the year, once employees of the Road Safety Council have been paid the off their gratuities and pension, they will join us in government and we will be one family. This will help us because correction of identified challenges will be much faster,” said Chirwa.
He said unlike in the past when RTD officers were operating on their own and NRSCM officials were moving on their own civic educating motorists, that process was time consuming.
“Now if a minibus has been stopped by RTD officers, RSC officials will be there to civic educate them on any wrong that they have done. At the end of the day we will bring sanity on our roads and motorists will also save on time because its like we are killing two birds with one stone. Cars will not be stopped anyhow,” said Chirwa.
Chirwa admitted that some motorists were complaining that sometimes they had to go to three different bodies to have a traffic case sorted out.
“We have traffic police, RTD and NRSCM and if you closely look we all have one mandate and that is to reduce accidents by bringing order on the roads. Sometimes a motorist would go to these bodies to sort out one case and it was cumbersome,” said Chirwa.
Principal Secretary 2 in the Ministry of Transport and Public Works Rexie Chiluzi, concured with Chirwa that merging the two institutions will bring order and motorists will get civic education any time they are stopped by the RTSS officials.
“Apart from merging the two institutions as a country we are also in the process of developing a Road Safety Strategy which will have an outline of actions to be implemented in order to achieve specific goals,” said Chiluzi.n
