Government promises concrete measures to stop bloodshed on the roads

The Council of Ministers of Mozambique has promised concrete measures to curb the high rates of road accident fatalities in Mozambique.

"We may announce, in the next sessions of the Council of Ministers, concrete measures" in the face of road accidents," said Filimão Sauze, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, after a session at the Mozambican Presidency, in Maputo.

According to the voice, the decisions are the result of recommendations by a commission of inquiry created after the most serious road accident ever recorded in Mozambique, with 32 deaths, which occurred on July 3 in the district of Manhiça, involving two trucks and a bus that tried to make an irregular overtaking on the National Highway 1 (EN1), the main road in the country.

A week ago, the district of Manhiça was again the scene of another traffic accident, when a jeep collided head-on with a light public transport vehicle traveling from Maputo to Xai-Xai, the capital of Gaza province, resulting in the death of 18 people.

"It is based on the holistic findings of the commission that we are working to define measures that do not exclusively solve the issue of Manhiça, but that seek to cover the issue of accidents in our country," said the spokesman of the Council of Ministers. After the last accident, the Maputo provincial government met in an extraordinary meeting with several authorities and they reported a reinforcement of enforcement along the EN1 in the Manhiça district.

For some years now, Mozambican roads have been transformed into true death corridors. A fact that has worried not only the government, but also civil society.

According to official data, Mozambique registers an average of at least a thousand deaths by traffic accident annually.

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