Today the Department of Transport held the opening ceremony for its Inter-Agency Traffic Enforcement Capacity Building Program. It's a training that will enhance the expertise and field capabilities of traffic enforcement personnel across different agencies. Facilitators for this training are from the Bureau of Standards, the Department of Transport, and the Caribbean Forensic Services. Here is a snippet of that ceremony.
Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Transportation
"It is imperative for us as a government and respective departments to make sure we do our best to collaborate with each other to be able to enhance road safety. Having over 100 persons dying on our highways annually is unacceptable, and it is something we are trying to curb. But it is not going to be done by the Department of Transport alone, or by the police alone, or by the respective municipal bodies alone; it will require the support and input of every department that has a responsibility for road safety."
"During this training, you will be going through a number of things. Looking at the helmet standardizations, looking at the use of breathalyzers and other stuff. Breathalyzers are very important, and I'm trying to see how best we can get some breathalyzers in-country to be able to be used on our highways daily."
Leon Gentle, Chief Transport Officer
"There's gonna be five modules that we will be looking at. First one would be the duties of traffic wardens, power of arrest, and the legislative amendments as it relates to DUI. The second module looks at report writing, and CEO would stand bravely and said he's the best teacher that you will come across. I'm not sure how true that is, but we'll see how it goes. And then we look at motorcycle helmets and its standards."
"And then we have on Wednesday, we will look at the proper use of breathalyzers and then we'll do some training relating to that. On Thursday, we then look at electronic evidence as it relates to the changes in legislation and the use of the body cams and dash cams. And on Friday, of course, we'll be doing a simulation on a case file preparation."
