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Bahrain police to step up school patrolling

MANAMA, September 4, 2014

An initiative to increase the number of police patrolling hundreds of schools in Bahrain is underway to ensure the safety of children crossing busy streets.

The Traffic Directorate has also intensified the training of community police and security guards ahead of the new academic year which will start next week, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

It formed a committee which has studied traffic accidents near schools and submitted a set of recommendations to increase road safety.

“We have increased our manpower and vehicles as a traffic directorate in general and they will be there,” General Director of Traffic Shaikh Nasser bin Abdulrahman Al Khalifa told the GDN yesterday.

“We have trained school security on what we want them to do and they have a more active role this year.

“We also trained other police departments to help us.

“The manpower has increased to two shifts, both in the morning and end of the school day, with equal numbers of policemen.”

He also stressed the importance of parents taking responsibility for their children's safety.

“There are lots of mistakes that we have seen committed by parents,” he said.

“It varies between dropping them in the wrong area, or making wrong decisions about U-turns and things like that.

“One solution is to create a one-way road in front of schools, so they don't have the chance to make that mistake.

“The other is to increase awareness.”

Interior Ministry Under-Secretary Major-General Khalid Salem Al Absi said one of the committee's recommendations was to increase awareness of traffic culture among motorists and students.

“We need to increase awareness campaigns for parents, students and drivers, as well as school supervision bodies,” he said during a Press conference held yesterday at the Traffic Directorate headquarters in Riffa.

“We also need to continue and intensify the training of security guards and community police, increasing their role in organising the movement and flow in front of schools.

“Schools and kindergartens need to develop basic standards to ensure the safety of students and facilitate the flow of traffic in the vicinity of the school through an audit on new licences.

“Those licences should be displayed for any educational facility to ensure the availability of traffic safety standards.

“We also need to encourage scientific studies and specialised research in the field of engineering and road safety.”

He said while there have been various accidents in front of schools in Bahrain, the only fatality in the last three years happened on May 20.

Ten-year-old schoolgirl Noora Jaber Al Suwaidi suffered fatal head injuries after she was hit by a GMC Yukon that reversed suddenly near Al Iman School in Isa Town.

“There were no deaths resulting from traffic accidents in front of schools from 2011 to 2014, except for a single incident in May this year,” said Major-General Al Absi.

“We have had three accidents with serious injuries in 2011, three in 2012 and four in 2013.

“As for minor injuries, we had 11 in 2011, seven in 2012 and four in 2013.” - TradeArabia News Service




Tags: Bahrain | School | Police | accident | patrol |

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