DOHA: The National Traffic Safety Strategy (NTSS), in the second phase, has targeted to reduce traffic congestion by five percent per year.

“The objective of the Strategy is also to cut road accident deaths to 130 deaths annually, reduce the number of serious injuries to 400 annually through development of urban planning, road networks and transport,” said Traffic Department Director-General Brig Mohamed Saad Al Kharji.

Al Kharji was giving a presentation at 8th annual seminar and workshop on reducing road traffic accidents which began yesterday. The event is organised by Karwa in cooperation with the International Road Transport Union (IRU), in partnership with the General Directorate of Traffic and the National Traffic Safety Committee.

Al Kharji emphasised that Qatar is one of the world’s leading countries in the field of traffic safety. It was the first to establish the National Traffic Safety Committee and to establish the National Traffic Safety Bureau to carry out evaluation, follow-up, support stakeholders and promote Qatar’s global position in the field of road safety.

Al Kharji said that during the first operational phase of the NTSS (2013-2017), Qatar had achieved fruitful results in reducing the death rate resulting from traffic accidents and in adopting the implementation of the United Nations sustainable development goals ratified by Qatar.

He explained that the General Directorate of Traffic bears about 20 percent of the total national plans distributed in different sectors such as traffic accidents investigations, patrols, driving licenses, awareness, traffic engineering, road safety and laws.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of the National Traffic Safety Committee, Brig. Engineer Mohammed Abdullah Al Maliki, confirmed that the traffic safety strategy has moved Qatar to a leading level in road safety.

Al Malki reported that the achievement rate of the traffic safety strategy in its first phase of “2013-2017 “ was about 62 percent, with a significant decrease in the number of road traffic fatalities (5.4 per 100,000 people) in this phase.

With regard to the second phase of the strategy, Al Malki explained that the National Traffic Safety Committee received the reports of stakeholders on the progress of completion during the first and second quarter of 2018 according to the specifications of the new evaluation and follow-up system and owning the success to the significant efforts made by the coordinators of the stakeholders.

Source: The Peninsula Qatar