The National Traffic Safety Committee (NTSC) secretary general Brigadier Mohamed Abdulla al-Malki has highlighted the necessity of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and need for advanced maintenance methods in traffic applications in the country.
He was addressing a forum of agencies involved in implementing the National Traffic Safety Strategy (NTSS) on Monday.
With the theme “Evaluation of the operational plan 2017-2022,” the event was held under the auspices of HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, who is also the chairman of the NTSC.
While stressing the necessity of building more road networks, Brigadier al-Malki highlighted the need of improving transport services and traffic safety across the country. The NTSC is also dealing with such issues as urban planning, mass transport, traffic congestion and traffic safety.
The NTSS has specified two phases, each with a five-year time frame, aimed at reducing the mortality rate from 14 per 100,000 individuals to six by 2022.
In the first half of the first phase, the strategy achieved more than expected results, where it showed a decline to 7.5 in 2015, which indicated significant progress made by the country in reducing fatal road accidents.
The official said as many as 114 projects have been implemented out of 166 projects of the operational plans under specified authorities during 2013-2016.
The remaining projects have been given a timeline of July 2017 to be completed and some of them have been transferred to the 2017-2022 plan.
Al-Malki also outlined a number of topics of the next phase, including adopting a vision for each institution, follow up to be made by their officials and implementation, obstacles in their implementation, evaluation of the benefits, and priorities of the next plan.
NTSC’s National Road Safety Office manager Kim Jraiw, the General Directorate of Traffic’s Traffic Safety Engineering director Brigadier Mohamed Marafia, Traffic Awareness and Media Department director Lt Col Mohamed Radhi al-Hajiri and traffic awareness experts David Healey, Sonia Fordord, and Henrietta Werner also spoke.