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School safety forums to be set up

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, AUG. 24. School safety forums will be set up in all schools in the State with the assistance of various departments to create awareness on road safety among school children, the Education Minister. Nalakath Sooppy, has said.

Launching the State-level school safety forum and training to junior road safety officers under the ongoing Kerala State Transport Project (KSTP) at a function held at the Police Training College here today, Mr. Sooppy said that the forums being set up in 50 schools now would be extended to all schools in the State. The setting up of the forums in schools had been taken up with the Director of Public Instruction, he added.

Lack of awareness

Pointing out that school children constitute a major chunk of the number of pedestrians getting killed in road accident, the Minister said that the lack of awareness about road safety and traffic rules were the main reasons for accidents involving children. He hoped that accident rate would come down once awareness was created among the road-users.

The Minister for Public Works, M.K. Muneer, said that road safety had been made an integral part of the KSTP project as it had been found that road safety was not given due priority in the State.

He pointed out that Kerala topped in the number of accidents among the States in the country with 112 accidents taking place on an average every day during the last six months. Mr. Muneer said that the increase in accidents was a matter of concern for the Government and the road-users.

The road network and other infrastructure facilities had not developed commensurate to the increase in vehicle population in the State, he said.

Novel concept

Mr. Muneer hoped that the novel concept of school safety forums would be able to bring about a major change in the accident scenario in the State and help educate school children on road safety.

The Director General of Police, P.K. Hormese Tharakan, pointed out that ensuring road safety was one of the biggest challenges in the State. He admitted that various agencies such as the traffic police had not been able to bring down the number of accidents.

The Transport Commissioner, K.P. Somarajan, the Director of the National Transportation Planning and Research Centre, T. Elangovan, the Chief Engineer of the KSTP, H.V. Haridas and the Superintending Engineer, Thomas, attended.

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