Winner of the Puma road safety award speaks out

Dar es Salaam. Roads accidents have been taking away lives and in most cases it is due to careless driving on our roads. Winner of the 2017 Puma Energy Primary school road safety drawing competition, Nasri Mwema has called upon drivers in the country to follow road safety rules strictly.

Nasri emerged winner at the drawing competition that involved 21,000 students from 14 schools in two region of Dar es Salaam and Kilimanjaro. For his efforts Nasri took home Sh2 million, a prize that was sponsored by the Puma Energy Tanzania after his drawing depicting more children being killed on roads emerged winner.

According to him most drivers know the rules and regulations of road safety, but some violet them deliberately.

“You can see drivers driving at a high speed to the extent of not respecting the zebra crossing, even where there are bumps they don’t care and in the process cause death to the very people who are supposed to be tomorrow’s leaders,” said Mwema.

Chief Traffic Police Commander, the Commanding Officer, Traffic Police Division SACP Furtunatus Musilim said stern punishment will be taken on drivers who do not obey traffic laws.

“We will ar our target is to stop death toll caused by dangerous driving, we have managed to reduce the death of people via accidents, we now have to stop this carelessness,” said Musilim.

Puma Energy General Manager, Philippe Corsaletti said they were proud to be part and parcel in the road safety campaign that involves road safety awareness training to school children which also involves a drawing competition among school children.

“The purpose of involving school children is because we believe young children need to be sensitised on road safety awareness from their childhood. In doing so they grow up with road safety knowledge which they acquire at a young age…this is our first priority,’’ said Corsaletti.

Corsaletti said Road safety is the company’s number one agenda in community social responsibilities; “We have decided to take special focus on primary school children knowing that they are exposed to many road dangers.’’

He said that Puma Energy is engaged in road safety initiatives in all countries where the company operates around the world.

“Since 2013 we in Puma Energy Tanzania decided to add to what we have been doing, and put a special focus on road safety training for primary schoolchildren,” said Corsaletti.

According to Corsaletti, they have managed to cover 47schools with a total number of 60,000 students. All pupils have been trained and tested.

“Our plan is as to go asfar as possible, to reach all primary schools in Tanzania with road safety education. For us, road safety is considered to be critical and serious. School children are the greatest asset of any nation and their safety remains one of the top safety agendas within Puma Energy Tanzania,” he said.

He added: Our joy is not only to be awarding the competition but also seeing the extent to which the rate of road accidents are going down. This joy will be fullfilled once we manage to cover all the remaining schools in the country.