By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
Almost two years ago, former President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), Frank Kposowa, died in a ghastly road accident, after a government bus ran in to his vehicle whiles he was travelling on the Freetown - Bo highway.
Like Kposowa’s, hundreds more lives have been cut short on Sierra Leone's roads.
Not one, two or three hundred, but 519 people died on the country’s roads in 2019, according to the Sierra Leone Roads Safety Authority (SLRSA).
Why authorities are not already treating the situation as an emergency, in spite of such a high death toll, is baffling.
Of those who perished on the roads in the year under review (this year), 214 were men, 266 women, and the most heart-breaking figure of all is the 39 children who also lost their lives in the course of the period.
Future, promise and hope, all wasted on tarmacs and on hospital beds.
This must not be happening. No one should seat in a vehicle or motorbike anywhere and just resign their safety to fate.
These numbers are an indictment to bodies like the Police, SLRSA and the Ministry of Transport and Aviation. The numbers should mean more than a statistic. And at the very least they should provoke some outrage from the public. But this has not been the case.
Since these statistics were compiled in December last year, the SLRSA or the Ministry of Transport and Aviation are yet to announce any measure to curb road accidents.
Crashes on the road over the years in Sierra Leone have been caused by over speeding, human error and overloading. All this has also been underlined by recklessness. It is hard to account for how much road accidents were caused specifically by either of these factors. Shortage of serious technical capacity for bodies like the SLRSA and Police means that road crash investigations are either inconclusive or not done at all.
A lot of the accidents are reported on highways. The Freetown to Bo highway is one of the busiest roads in the country. It links the capital, Freetown to the South and Eastern regions of the country. It was on that stretch of road that Kposowa was killed in 2018.
Along this road there are at least three checkpoints, manned by road safety corps, police and sometimes the military. Together they give free pass to commercial vehicles even when in most of those cases they are overloaded.
A spokesman for the SLRSA told Politico that it's not celebrate.
Abdul Karim Dumbuya, Public Relations Officer of the Authority, said drivers outsmart them by sending their passengers ahead to cross those checkpoints before the vehicles get to the checkpoints.
“You hardly see overloaded vehicles pass through checkpoints. What they do, which we have also noticed, is that they send their extra passengers ahead to cross the checkpoint. Once we introduce the patrol vehicles all this will be solved.”
When asked about the lack of statistics, Dumbuya admitted that they needed to do more.
“We are doing quite a lot, but this shows that we have to do more. Stationary vehicles and over speeding have been two of the key causes of road crashes,” he said.
So, what are they doing about it?
He said: “In the area of stationary vehicles, we have negotiated with the Freetown Teachers College for three acres of land. We will toe abandoned vehicles and take them to the site to park them permanently.”
He added: “To deal with over speeding, we are about to get patrol vehicles before the end of the second quarter. Once we get these vehicles, we will introduce technology to deal with those over speeding."
Whiles we wait till July, September or whenever they get their patrol vehicles, more lives will continue to perish on the roads.
Whiles patrol vehicles will be a significant step to prevent road accidents, it will take much more than that.
*SLRSA itself has been complicit in the problem, by allowing some vehicles that are clearly in a very bad shape to continue being on roads. The authority has also not followed through on the full enforcement of its own policies.*
Example: The SLRSA has almost abandoned its policy on ending the use of metal seats in poda-podas (mini-vans).
Visibly damaged and unworthy vehicles are still plying routes in the capital; vehicles traveling with passengers to Kingtom and Dwarzak are notorious for being in bad shape.
There is no gain mentioning buses, poda-podas and trucks that still produce a lot of dark smoke and thereby polluting the air and contributing to a growing carbon footprint.
The combination of these situations is like a huge disaster waiting to happen.
SLRSA collate accident data every year, alongside other relevant information relating to road transport safety. Last year the Authority decided to look into the vehicle brands that are most frequently involved in accidents.
Ambrose Tucker, Head of the Research and Development at SLRSA, said Serena, a brand of Nissan, stood out.
The study focused on 276 incidences of road accidents involving Serena, Toyota Hilux, Mitsubishi van, Mercedez Benz, Nissan Fortuner and Nissan Sony van brands. With 68 cases, Serena vehicles were involved in the single largest number of accidents.
Toyota Hilux accounted for 40 cases, Mitsubishi vans 53 cases, Mercedes Benz Toyota van 56 cases, Nissan Fortuner 23, and Nissan Sony 36 cases.
Based on this finding, the Authority is considering banning Serena vehicles from playing routes on the highway, a move the Drivers Union in the country kicked against.
Alpha Amadu Bah, President of the Motor Drivers and General Transport Workers Union (SLMDGTWU), said it would put many drivers out of job with huge financial implications on many families.
“They would be depriving thousands of families who are dependent on these drivers,” he told Politico.
He added: “If they are worried about accidents, then they should ban Okada (Motorcycles) because they are also involved in a lot of accidents.”
Banning Serena vehicles from the highway is still a proposal, and it might not come into effect anyway. It may also come to effect but not anytime soon.
But is this really a long-term solution? Are we going to ban a new series of vehicles not to ply some routes based on their frequency in crashes? Whiles this might be reasonable, it may not be sustainable.
So, this is an issue that stakeholders like the SLRSA, Ministry of Transport, Police and even the drivers must think about.
But once again, all these engagements are happening without any urgency. Why are road safety issues not an urgent concern for the country?
The death toll is too high for Sierra Leone not to treat this as an emergency.
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