Editorial: Lip service on road safety requires integrated road traffic management, leadership by example

Last Updated on Sunday, 17 August 2025, 21:40 by Writer

The Guyana government, which includes it various agencies, need to cease giving lip-service to road safety because, never mind the periodic talk-shops on the need to reduce the number of accidents, little is being done.

Beyond the occasional appearance of white-sleeved traffic police at a couple of busy traffic junctions, the Guyana Police Force appears to lack a traffic management strategy to address congestion and sudden traffic build-ups.

It is clear that the Guyana Police Force makes limited use of the numerous closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras that have been installed around Georgetown and elsewhere. Motorists especially brazenly commit traffic offences especially at intersections but there is no record of any of them being prosecuted. The offences include breaching the red light, violating the one-way, disregard for pedestrians and other road users, and parking on pavements and turns.

It is time senior traffic officers monitor those CCTV cameras routinely and instruct the deployment of traffic police to take remedial action and institute charges when necessary. The offenders’ names and the offence committed must be publicised when they are charged to serve as a deterrent.

Secondly, the Ministry of Public Works is yet to make good on its almost one-year-old promise to mend traffic lights, including those regulating pedestrian traffic. As a matter of fact, part of the problem appears to be the damage or destruction of buried electricity and related cables linked to the traffic lights.

If and whenever new traffic lights are installed, the public works ministry should consider running the electrical and regulator cables overhead on utility poles to significantly reduce their cutting during excavation works to repair burst water and sewage mains as has been the case in the vicinity of the Bank of Guyana.

Thirdly, the Guyana Police Force’s Traffic Department needs to enforce the traffic laws without fear, favour or preference. It is patently clear that the laws are enforced selectively, avoiding places where the ‘rich, famous and government-associated’ frequent. There, one sees vehicles parked on the pavement, on the turn and even on the pedestrian crossing in full view of the government-run CCTV cameras. On the other hand, the ordinary Guyanese, with no social or political connections, in downtown Georgetown easily has his or her vehicle clamped as a precursor to prosecution or bribe payment.

Fourthly, members of the Guyana Police Force, including those in the Traffic Department, must themselves abide by the laws. They must not engage in unnecessary speeding, unnecessary use of sirens, reckless driving, and riding without helmets. Recently, in Baramita, Region One, on-duty police officers were seen driving all-terrain vehicles without helmets. The Police Force also needs to enforce the relevant law/regulation governing the use of tints. Nowhere is this most pervasive, as a glaring example, than among members of the Presidential Guard whose privately-owned vehicle windscreens and windows are heavily tinted. To add insult to injury, most of those presidential guards’ licence number plates are not written in keeping with the specifications, making them hardly readable at first glance. Is it that the presidential guards are exempt from the law/regulation governing tinted windscreens and non-standard licence plates?

It is ironic that the government, Guyana Police Force and the National Road Safety Council periodically wake up from their comatose state and speak to the need for road safety, but the glaring violations by the presidential guards are seen daily inside as their vehicles are parked outside State House and the Prime Minister’s Official Residence.

Not so much in passing, several members of the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force use their heavily tinted, privately-owned vehicles that are licensed in ‘P’ to moonlight as taxi drivers. Coming with this are all sorts of legal and insurance implications should there be an accident. This begs the questions of whether the Guyana government, including the Police Force, is deliberately turning a blind eye to these violations and whether police and soldiers are exempt from using their positions of assumed privilege to violate the law.

Fifthly, the Ministry of Public Works and the Guyana Police Force’s CCTV Traffic Department monitors, as suggested above, need to remove all obstructions, such as party advertising billboards on utility poles, from pedestrian traffic lights whenever they are activated or reinstalled, hopefully not light years away.

Sixthly, the Guyana Police Force’s Traffic Department, Ministry of Public Works and/or the Mayor and City Council need to work collaboratively to clear several blocked drains in Georgetown that prevent pedestrians from accessing and using the avenues. If no remedial action is taken, it is patently obvious that pedestrians will have to walk on the roads and risk being struck down by vehicles.

Seventhly, the Guyana Water Incorporated also needs to be part of this integrated road traffic management strategy to urgently repair broken mains that damage the road and so snarl traffic on already congested roads. Similarly, GWI needs to immediately repair burst mains that are damaging pedestrian walkways and pavements. Case in point: outside the National Library on Church Street where the already cracked pavement is being washed away.

Eighthly, the Ministry of Public Works and/or the relevant Local Government or Regional Council must of necessity clear all drains, repair all potholes and remove pile-ups of silt and other material that result in the accumulation of water. This is vitally necessary not only to obviously avoid floods but to prevent pedestrians from getting wet by passing vehicles.

Ninthly, all driving schools must be accredited by the National Accreditation Council to meet the best globally accepted standards of instruction. Those schools must include driver simulation systems to train persons before they actually start the real-life practical training.

Tenthly, the Guyana Government needs to learn from and implement best practices in other Caribbean countries in the management of vehicles on the roadways. As such, serious consideration must be given to the establishment of a transport board to deal with issues of licensing, provision of license number plates (to replace the street corner operations), fare structures, standards for road usage and the regulation of driving schools.

Addressing all of these issues are vitally necessary if Guyanese at all levels are to have any modicum of confidence in the Police Force, Guyana government and the National Road Safety Council in tackling poor road usage and the carnage on Guyana’s roads.