Transport Minister, Joe Maswanganyi, said that as a result of a “well-executed” festive season plan there had been a noticeable decline in the number of fatalities in seven of the nine provinces.
Releasing the Festive Season Road statistics on Monday, Maswanganyi said that “preliminary festive season fatalities for the period starting December 1, 2017, to January 9, 2018, show that there were 1 527 who died on the roads in that period compared to 1 714 fatalities in the same period the previous year.”
The Transport Minister said this represented an 11% decline which surpassed their target of a 10% reduction in road fatalities.
Minister Maswanganyi said that the Western Cape and North West Provinces recorded increases in road fatalities of 7% and 11% respectively.
“When considering the entire holiday period from December 1st, 2017 to January 15th, 2018, there were 1 676 fatalities compared to 1 875 fatalities for the same period in the previous year,” he said.
Maswanganyi said that the highest number of fatalities was among pedestrians which increased from 34% to 37% while the number of drivers who died in accidents increased from 23% to 27%.
Meanwhile, the Minister said that his Ministry was also involved in a crackdown on corruption at driving license centres, arresting 32 people in the process.
One of those arrests was in the Eastern Cape
“To further decisively out root fraud and corruption, we have initiated a process to audit all vehicle testing centres and driver and learner testing centres to establish adherence to regulations and standards,” he said.
Maswanganyi said that this process will run parallel to the investigation that is being undertaken by the Special Investigation Unit as proclaimed by the State President in November 2017.
