Road accidents: Zim, SA to meet

Freeman Razemba

Senior Reporter

ZIMBABWEAN and South African officials meet next week to work out how to reduce road traffic accidents and control the movement of dangerous goods between the two countries.

This comes after there has been an increase in fatal road accidents involving cross-border buses in South Africa, prompting officials there to meet with their Zimbabwean counterparts.

SA’s Cross-Border Road Transport Agency (C-BRTA) has since requested to meet officials from the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development under Minister Felix Mhona between October 31 and November 3.

The Ministry has since confirmed that they will be attending the meeting.

In a statement, C-BRTA executive manager responsible for law enforcement Dr Linda Mbana confirmed the developments.

C-BRTA is responsible for regulating commercial cross-border road transport in South Africa and performs four mandatory functions: providing advice to their Minister on transport-based matters, regulating market access by issuing permits to qualifying operators, facilitating the seamless flow of goods and passengers into the SADC region, and law enforcement through countrywide inspections to ensure compliance with the cross-border regulations.

The agency also handles safety and security within the cross-border road transport industry as a whole.

“The C-BRTA is also one of the five roads’ entities responsible for the implementation of the National Road Safety Strategy in the country. Subsequently, in South Africa, the month of October has been declared as Transport Month. It has been set aside to promote road safety and the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021 to 2030,” said Dr Mbana.

“This is done by staging campaigns and activities. Against this background, the C-BRTA is embarking on the execution of its 2024 October Transport Month, ‘Cross Alive’ campaign and joint law enforcement operation.

“The campaign and operation will be conducted as a collaboration with stakeholders both locally and regionally to curtail the scourge and effects of road incidents and dangerous goods”.

Referring to the need for Zimbabwean and South African officials to meet, Dr Mbana said: “Due to the recent spate of bus incidents between the two sister members, it is therefore incumbent upon the two to agree on some pragmatic interventions to arrest the scourge. Moreso, as we gravitate towards the 2024 festive season.”

C-BRTA wanted to embark on testing every cross-border bus driver to establish their state of road worthiness and if they were not compliant, they could be asked to do a retest before resuming their normal operations.