By Prior Beharry
THE non-use of walkovers has led to the increase in road traffic fatalities in Trinidad and Tobago.
This was the revelation by Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan on Friday.
He was speaking to reporters after the graduation ceremony of 107 traffic wardens at the head office of the Ministry of Works and Transport in Port of Spain.
Sinanan said, “We do have walkovers. We spend a lot of money on walkovers. The average walkover can cost us between $10 million and $15million.
“But what we find are a lot of people not utilising the walkovers and that has taken up the fatality (rate) in Trinidad to above what happened last year.
“So we have seen a slight increase but when you work it down, a significant amount of the accidents are road fatalities by people crossing the highways at points they are not supposed to so we urge the citizens, please utilise the walkovers and understand that not every time you want to cross the road you can cross at that exact point, sometime you may have to walk down a little.”
He said on Wrightson Road was a walkover but people were still running under it and jumping the median to get across.
“That is dangerous (and) that only helps to increase the road fatality,” SInanan said.
On Tuesday, a 65-year-old man was crossing the Churchill Roosevelt Highway and was killed causing a traffic jam for hours for people coming into Port of Spain .
Also at the function and speaking to reporters was National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds. About the road falatlity and traffic jam on Tuesday, he said that police only allowed one lane access that caused the massive inconvenience to motorists, but this was unavoidable.
He said the police had to cordoned off the road to preserve the accident scene.
Hinds said, “The body was broken up and was scattered and therefore it allowed only one lane of traffic to go by.”
He said, “When the crime scene investigators got on the scene they had to treat with it so for that purpose they stopped the traffic altogether.”
The graduation ceremony saw 107 new wardens coming on to the nation’s roads to help with traffic management and assist the police.
Sinanan said there were currently about 200 wardens on the streets and wanted that figure to be about 500 by next year.
He said traffic wardens will be deployed at the Piarco International Airport to manage traffic outside of it. “So to allow the airport guards to concentrate in the internal security,” Sinanan said.
He said the wardens will also be deployed at St Ann’s, Maraval, Diego Martin, St James, Cunupia, Couva, Rio Claro and Siparia to support deficiencies in these areas.
The 107 new traffic wardens spent six weeks of training at the Police Barracks in St James and were chosen from 1,400 applicants.
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