RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With an 11 per cent in­crease in road fa­tal­i­ties for 2019, lo­cal ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­er, Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) is do­ing its part to cre­ate a stronger road safe­ty cul­ture across T&T. 

Dur­ing a road safe­ty cam­paign at the Clax­ton Bay Se­nior An­gli­can School, TCL of­fi­cials taught chil­dren the im­por­tance of be­ing safe on the na­tion’s roads.

A to­tal of 119 stu­dents got the op­por­tu­ni­ty of com­ing in close prox­im­i­ty to a ce­ment truck.

Im­ple­ment­ed in con­junc­tion with its par­ent com­pa­ny - glob­al build­ing so­lu­tions provider Ce­mex, TCL got the wheels of its Vul­ner­a­ble Road User (VRU) pro­gramme rolling as they sought to en­cour­age prop­er safe­ty pre­cau­tions among the chil­dren.

The stu­dents were cap­ti­vat­ed and ex­cit­ed as the Readymix (West In­dies) Lim­it­ed safe­ty-brand­ed con­crete mix­er fea­tur­ing the mes­sage “Don’t Chance It. Look­out be­fore you step out” drove on to the school com­pound.

 TCL’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Guiller­mo Ro­jo, who ac­com­pa­nied his team shared es­sen­tial tips about safe be­hav­iour on the na­tion’s road­ways.

Say­ing the com­pa­ny was con­cerned about the alarm­ing rate of road ac­ci­dents and wants to be a cat­a­lyst in im­prov­ing the sta­tis­tics, Ro­jo said, “Face it, we are with­in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try which utilis­es heavy ve­hi­cles. Part of our job is to strate­gi­cal­ly im­ple­ment on­go­ing pro­grams to mit­i­gate the im­pact of our op­er­a­tions and that of the en­tire in­dus­try.”

The gen­er­al man­ag­er added, “ We see chil­dren as a very vul­ner­a­ble group and the best place to start with road safe­ty aware­ness”.

He not­ed that the road safe­ty ini­tia­tive will be con­tin­ued at oth­er schools in the vicin­i­ty of TCL’s op­er­a­tions as well as oth­er in­ter­est­ed com­mu­ni­ties by 2020.

A to­tal of 97 per­sons have lost their lives on the na­tion’s roads for 2019.

Prin­ci­pal of the school Car­ol Pil­grim and her staff said they were very grate­ful for the pro­gramme, which they found to be an in­no­v­a­tive one.