New Year holiday accidents claim 9 lives, injure 36
Malawi Police Service says it recorded 20 road accidents on New Year’s Day where nine people died and 36 others sustained injuries.
In an interview on Tuesday, National Police deputy spokesperson Harry Namwaza said the number of accidents is on the lower side compared to the previous year when 46 road accidents were recorded and 17 people were killed.
“However, during this New Year’s festive period, the number of injuries has increased as compared to 2022 where 30 people got injured,” he said.
During the Christmas Day weekend, there were 36 road accidents in which 11 people died and 34 sustained various degrees of injuries, bringing the number of accidents, deaths and injuries in this festive season to 56, 20 and 70, respectively.
Between December 31 2022 and January 2 2023, most of the accidents were recorded from Central West Region and South West Region with seven and five road accidents, respectively.
Namwaza said: “Police note with concern that some drivers continue with their careless behaviour on the road such as unnecessary overspeeding, drink and drive, careless overtaking which has caused road accidents and in the course losing lives of passengers, pedestrians and pedal cyclists.”
Central West Police Region covers Lilongwe, Mchinji, Dedza and Ntcheu while South West Police Region covers Blantyre, Mwanza and Neno districts. On the other hand, South East Police Region has Mulanje, Thyolo, Chikwawa, Nsanje, Phalombe and Chiradzulu.
Namwaza said at least 320 drivers were between December 31 and January 2 booked for over speeding while 88 were booked for drink-driving.
Police further said accidents that occurred between December 24 and 27, represented a 10 percent increase from last year’s 10 deaths.
On the other hand, the number of people injured during the Christmas celebrations dropped by 26.1 percent from last year’s 46 road accidents.
The data further shows that the Central East Police Region, which covers Kasungu, Nkhotakota, Ntchisi, Salima and Dowa recorded four deaths in five road accidents while South West, Central West and Eastern Police regions recorded two deaths each against 11, 10 and four road accidents, respectively. Eastern Police Region covers Zomba, Machinga, Balaka and Mangochi.
The data also indicates that the number of road accidents have decreased by about 16.3 percent from 43 in 2021 to 36 in 2022.
National Police spokesperson Peter Kalaya attributed the slight reduction in road accidents to measures traffic police and the Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services put in place to reduce the numbers of accidents and fatalities through enforcement of road safety rules.
In the past four years, Malawi has been registering fluctuating trends in road accidents over the festive season.
Records indicate that 16 people died during the Christmas period in 2016 against 67 accidents, five died in 2019 against 38 accidents while 11 people died in 2018 against 54 accidents.
In 2018 police recorded four accidents and one death during the New Year holidays while in 2019 it recorded 19 accidents that claimed 11 lives. In 2021 the nation registered seven deaths in 49 road accidents over the same period.
