Yutong distributor trains drivers

LOCAL distributor of Yutong vehicles in the country, J K Plant Pool Ghana Limited, has launched a four week retraining course for drivers and transport operators in the country.
Dubbed: “Traning drivers saves life”, the refresher course is a collaborative effort between the company and the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), the National Drivers’ Academy (NDA), as well as other transport operators and road safety stakeholders in the country focused  on equipping participants with  basic rules and regulations of driving.
During the launch in Accra, the General Manager of the J K Plant Pool, Mr Lolo Akendele, said the J K Plant Pool as a vehicle distribution and servicing company in the country was concerned with the surging incidents of road accidents recorded in the country.
“We believe safety on our roads can be achieved by a collective responsibility of all concerned stakeholders of road safety”, Mr Akendele said and added that the company’s reason for organising the course was not to “train people to drive, but to train them to drive safely”.
Road accidents has, for sometime now being on the increase and is estimated to be causing 1,600 deaths  annually in the country.
These accidents are estimated to cost the nation about 1.6 per cent of the country’s annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP), an equivalent of US$288 million.
According to the Transport Minister, Mr Collins Dauda, these road crashes were mainly due to road user behaviours and incompetence on the part of drivers in which “driver error ranks highest.”
During the launch, Mr Dauda said “Driver’s attitude in traffic is characterised by aggressiveness and impatience which leads to overspeeding, driving under the influence of alcohol, fatigue, wrongful overtaking and above all, disrespect for traffic laws and regulations”.
The minister, therefore, welcomed the initiative by the Yutong local agent and the other road safety stakeholders to refresh drivers on the various safety regulations necessary on the road.
Mr Dauda said the NRSC under the ministry had for sometime now trained over 300 drivers nation-wide.
He noted that these driver Training programmes had been restructured resulting in the setting up of the NDA last year March to provide upgrading and refresher training courses for drivers nation-wide.
The Managing Director of the NDA, Mr Franklin Asare, said the academy was currently liaising with the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Authority (DVLA) to make it mandatory for all drivers issued with a driver’s license to have completed a training course at the academy.
According to Mr Asare, if suggestions that road accidents in the country would in the coming years kill more people than malaria does are “truth, then it is a shame on us as a nation”.
 The J K Plant Pool Limited has so far distributed over 600 million species of Yutong vehicles throughout the country. The company also imports and trades spare parts of the various vehicles it deals in and further engages in servicing of the distributed vehicles.