National Traffic Safety Office to speed up projects

Qatar’s National Traffic Safety Office (NTSO), together with other government agencies concerned, is expected to speed up the implementation of its projects to substantially reduce road fatalities in the country.
“We have an awareness campaign, projects for pedestrian safety, but these have suffered some delays in the implementation process so we need to speed them up as a lot of entities and departments are involved in this,” said professor Kim Jraiw, manager of NTSO, at the National Traffic Safety Committee.
He was speaking at the “Traffic Safety and Sustainable Transport Systems” international forum yesterday.
By working extensively, he expressed confidence that they will meet their 2022 targets, including the adoption of UN resolutions and the sustainable development goals.
Apart from its road engineering assistance, the professor noted that they have established a general information system for assessing roads and a national plan for public transportation developed by the Traffic Department.
Jraiw expects to get “highly positive results” if all their plans will be implemented well.
“I hope in the future we will have a plan to have an incident management system, and a system to forecast traffic congestions,” he said.
Jraiw added that plans to establish a national traffic management centre will help to effectively run the movement of all departments and entities.
“This will require the attention of departments concerned and undertake effective strategic work to achieve the goals which were not achieved during the previous years,” the NTSC official added.
Stressing that “the government cannot continue building highways and roads forever,” he pointed out that other techniques and methods that have socio economic impacts should be pursued.
Sheikh Dr Mohamed bin Hamad al-Thani, director of Public Health at the Supreme Council of Health (SCH) said Qatar has been focusing on the safety of human beings, which is also “quite evidentially clear” from Qatar’s health strategy in the field of traffic safety.
“The health services extended and provided for injuries have witnessed many developments, which includes deploying ambulances and transporting injured persons, and the rapid response of collisions on the road,” he noted, adding that they also providing highly trained health workers to handle all injury cases.
The senior SCH official added that they will open a centre for physical and psychological rehabilitation for the injured next year.
“This requires the participation of all departments concerned to guarantee traffic safety on Qatar roads and to reduce fatalities and injuries, ensuring the quickest and fastest treatment,” he stressed.