The National Road Safety Council (NRSC) is $90 million short of the funds it needs to conduct a sustained and effective campaign to raise awareness about traffic crashes and influence driver behaviour to stem the carnage on Jamaica’s streets.
With crash deaths at 164 as at Thursday, May 16, trending higher than the corresponding period last year, vice-chairman of the NRSC, Dr Lucien Jones, said the traffic lobby has only a tenth, or $10 million, of the optimum spend it needs for public-education programmes, despite having Prime Minister Andrew Holness as its chairman.
Jones, who was speaking at a Gleaner Editors’ Forum last week, said the sum would be needed for a “sustained public-education programme” on the scale of blitzes on HIV, dengue, sugary drinks, and chikungunya.
But state minister in the Ministry of Education, Alando Terrelonge, drew the ire of forum guests when he said that the NRSC was failing to carry out its stated mandate, apparently oblivious of the NRSC’s budgetary constraints.
“If we are going to deal with the second leading cause of death in Jamaica, second to murder only, in the age cohort internationally between five and 30; if we are going to tackle the eighth leading cause of death across the world, it is going to cost money,” said Jones, amid stone-faced forum guests, peeved by Terrelonge’s assertion.
“We need an estimated $100 million for a proper public-education campaign,” Jones said.
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