The ManicaPost
THE ongoing countrywide consultations on the proposed Road Accident Fund must be applauded as they go a long way in securing the necessary buy-in from all concerned stakeholders.
This follows recent announcement by Government to set up the Road Accident Fund that will provide compensation for road accident victims and promote road safety prevention in line with the United Nations Pillar Five of the 2009 Moscow Declaration on the Decade of Action for Road Safety.
We commend the Government for moving with speed in the consultation process with stakeholders, and for setting 2018 as the target to operationalise the Fund. This time frame falls within the 2011-2020 Decade of Action for Road Safety, as proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2010.
The UN has for many years acknowledged road traffic crashes as a considerable challenge to the achievement of health and development goals. In 2008, the Commission for Global Road Safety called for a global road safety decade. This idea was formalized in the Declaration which resulted from the First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, hosted by the Government of Russia in November 2009.
While governments are expected to lead on the implementation of activities, the UN specifically calls for a multi-sectoral approach that includes academia, the private sector, civil society, the media, victims and their families. This is precisely the consultation process that the Government of Zimbabwe, through the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development, is currently undertaking countrywide.
The idea of the Road Accident Fund comes at a time when the country experienced two serious road accidents. The first bus accident claimed 31 lives when a Proliner bus was side-swiped by a haulage truck and immediately caught fire along the busy Masvingo-Beitbridge road near Chaka Growth Point.
The second accident in which 45 people perished involved a speeding King Lion bus, which crashed into a tree when the driver failed to negotiate a curve after a tyre burst at Nyamakate along the Harare-Chirundu road.
We note with sadness that our roads and highways, which have been created to enhance mobility and safe travelling have now become grave yards in this country. It is therefore, our utmost hope that the Road Accident Fund will facilitate in the settlement of compensation for loss or damage caused as a result of such road crashes. The Fund should provide compulsory cover to all road users in Zimbabwe against injuries sustained or deaths arising from motor vehicle accidents, thus providing a social security safety net for funds in a bid to provide care to road crash victims and restore balance in their lives.
It is however, important to point out that the concept of a Road Accident Fund is not something new. Other countries in the Sadc region like South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia have such a Fund in place. Sadc member countries met in Victoria Falls early this year to look at various modalities and share experiences with countries that have the Fund in operation. Countries like Zimbabwe have many lessons to draw from the other Sadc countries, particularly on the challenges faced by South Africa in the administration of the Fund.
We believe that in embracing the Road Accident Fund, Zimbabwe has taken the right steps and direction in ensuring the provision of an effective and efficient post accident care system, especially when it comes to reducing the number of people dying as a result of delayed emergence response.
It is on the back of the Road Accident Fund that the Government has mooted the idea of a fuel levy, which will generate resources for the Fund, and in the process provide social support to accident victims and the general citizenry who are left to suffer unbearable pain and loss of lives as a result of road crashes. The fuel levy will undoubtedly guarantee the establishment of a sustainable Fund.
We want Zimbabwe to have a solid Road Accident Fund system that provides appropriate cover to all road users, rehabilitate persons injured, compensate for injuries or deaths and support safe use of roads. Although accidents are preventable, the Fund would save for those that become victims and are permanently made to live a life that they never lived before the loss of income, the loss of abilities and the loss of support to the dependants that looked up to such individuals.
