4 April 2007
The South African Communist Party would like to take this opportunity to wish the Christian community of South Africa, and generally all South Africans a peaceful and safe Easter Weekend on the 6 - 8 April 2007.
During this weekend many South Africans will be on the roads travelling to various destinations for worshipping purposes, whilst many other South Africans will also be going on holiday. A matter of serious concern to us is the number of road fatalities during this period.
In line with our campaign for a Safe, Affordable, Reliable and Efficient Public Transport and Road Safety, we call on all road users to act in a responsible manner during this period. One more life lost through road accidents is too many.
We need to discourage the use of intoxicating substances by both pedestrians and the drivers, more specifically the consumption of alcohol. We are calling on all drivers and travellers to work together to ensure observance of all road traffic rules, and for commuters to be vigilant against drunken driving and vehicles that are unroadworthy. In particular we urge passengers in buses, taxis and other public vehicles to be more activist in ensuring that they are being driven under safe circumstances and conditions. Speeding and drunken drivers must be immediately confronted, as well as owners of who hire out unroadworthy vehicles and buses.
One of the leading causes of accidents on our roads is the issue of driver fatigue and over speeding. We call on all our drivers to exercise caution and to periodically rest so as not to put their lives and that of the other road users in risk. There is also a matter of conditions of our roads in most areas of our country. Our infrastructure development programmes should prioritise the development of roads so as to make it easy for our people mainly from rural areas to have access to better road conditions and the refurbishment of our existing roads whose conditions are deteriorating.
Related to this is our call to the various bus and taxi operators to exercise maximum respect of the lives of the users and not subject the drivers to long working hours. We should not prioritise profit over the lives of our people.
Whilst we welcome various interventions by the law enforcement agencies to ensure that our roads are safe over the forthcoming holiday period, we need to hasten to emphasises that such measures should not be adhoc but we need permanent measures to promote safety at all times.
The SACP is strongly of the view that it is only sustained investment into building a safe and affordable public transport system that will lay a strong foundation for safety for travellers. To this end we welcome government\'s planned investment into public and publicly owned transport. We need to speedily move towards transforming public transport, away from market driven considerations but to public ownership.
The SACP will continue to mobilise and build strong public transport action committees at a local level to make sure that communities are able to continuously shape the transport and safety policies at a local level. We once more extend a call to all stakeholders to untie in making sure that we take forwards the people\'s right for a Safe, Affordable, Accessible Efficient Transport System and Road Safety.
Issued by the SACP.
For information Contact:
Malesela Maleka
SACP Spokesperson
0822261802