After a recent spike in deaths on Mauritian roads,government and law enforcement officials say they are overly concerned following the release of fresh figures on road accidents on the island nation
The Prime Minters Offices and the Mauritian Police Force have released road accident figures indicating that since January the nation’s central Traffic Branch has recorded 80 deaths on Mauritian roads.
Ben Buntipilly, Special advisor on road safety to Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam told journalists that the amount of accidents on Mauritian roads recently was deplorable, however stipulating that overall it is forecasted to drop in 2013.
Mr Buntipilly speaking in Port Louis suggested the development of a national road safety policy with an actionable plan based on the current zero tolerance and penalty point system would hopefully lower road deaths .
Senior Mauritian Police officers have on numerous occasions spoke to Mauritian newspapers and radio chat shows since June, expressing that a considerable amount of fatal accidents are due to the lax and often ignorant attitude of drivers.
Additionally Buntipilly described that the Mauritian road network should be designed ergonomically with world standards in order to possibly circumvent road deaths further.
Due to the upsurge in road carnage the Mauritian Police Force and Prime Ministers Offices in 2012 introduced a penalty points system while installing over 50 new speed cameras across the island recently in May.
According to a study undertaken in 2002 by the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, it summarized that the island nation has a lack of road safety planning, and promptly survelleing traffic safety.
The study entitled Road safety In Mauritius-Engineering Perspectives also indicated that the island nation suffers from a lack of well-defined policies, road safety rules and strategy implementation by government .
Since 2003, 1459 deaths have been recorded on the island nation's roads according to the Mauritian Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Many within government believe that considering the population is just over 1.2 million ,road deaths should be considerably lower when comapred to larger populations in other nations in the developing world .