Speed guns were in action today at the entrance of Belmopan, as transport officers with the guidance of foreign consultants commenced an exercise at midday to see how they can enhance the efficiency of Belize's Transport System. Our team was stopped at the checkpoint and found out more about this exercise.
Improving road safety and enforcing traffic laws is a step in the right direction towards reducing traffic accidents and fatalities on the main highways and roads. As part of the CDB's Road safety project they've taken a pro-active approach with law enforcement and the traffic department, by identifying the areas in need of improvement and sourcing foreign consultants that can help make safety into a science. Their first round of consultations took place here at the entrance of Belmopan where a check point was set up to analyze the flow of traffic in and out of the capital city.
Peter Williams, Deputy Chief Transport Officer
"So we have some consultants from FRED Engineering which is a consultancy firm from Spain. They are doing a trafficking enforcement training program in Belize sometime in early July and the purpose of the training is essentially to improve on trafficking enforcement in Belize. We will be including our stakeholders such as the Belize police department and the various municipal traffic authorities in order for us to be able to see how we can advance traffic enforcement in Belize."
"So we are looking at making improvements such as customer service, how we interact with the public, how we interact with the media. It is very crucial and important and ensuring that the right information is disseminated throughout the country. We are also looking at improving our case file preparations so that we can have more successful convictions before the court. We are also going to be looking to see if the techniques for the officers, because the safety of our officers is priority at all times. We want to ensure that when an officer stops a vehicle and engages a driver or other person in a motor vehicle, can do so in a manner that is safe for them as well as a safer person in the motor vehicle. Those are some of the things that we will be looking at."
This one week training will also focus primarily on road traffic collision investigation, which will equip officers with the knowledge on how to handle these accidents. Up to 25 officers are expected to partake in this training.
Zane Castillo, Project Manager, II Road Safety Project
"This particular consultancy is over 300K USD and it has to do a lot more than just looking at the traffic and doing training. It also has to do with looking at a new system of drivers license we want to introduce into the country and also to enhance the drivers manual that we have already prepared."
"The manual is already developed but it was developed a couple years back and so now they are going to review it to bring it up to date and possibly add in new materials."
So apart from a driver's manual what other materials can be used to improve the transport system? One of the consultants explained that teaching the officers how to properly use traffic equipment like speed guns out in the field is crucial:
Michel Moutran, FRED Engineering, Consultancy Firm
"We are trying to make an exercise with the enforcement agency, especially the department of transportation in order to see what other gaps, what other holes, how the people interact with traffic law enforcement and what to change in the behavior of both the traffic agencies and the people. In order to best serve the cause of road safety this is very important to empower the department of transportation to lead road safety in Belize especially in crash investigation and the involvement of new equipment especially breath analyzers and the other guns."
