NIC Urged To Expedite Action On National Committee For Road Crash Victims

Mrs. Nicholina Adumuah-Ladzekpo, Cape Coast Area Manager of the National Insurance Commission (NIC) has called for the urgent establishment of a committee of stakeholders to champion the welfare of road traffic crash victims.

The committee, to be made up of all stakeholders involved in the documentation to process insurance including the Police MTTD, the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), the Attorney General among others would seek to address the challenges of road crash victims in securing the necessary materials to process insurance claims.

Mrs Adumuah-Ladzekpo, made the call at a ceremony to mark this year’s World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Crash Victims (WDoR) organised by the NRSA in Cape Coast at the weekend.

She lamented bitterly about the difficulty victims went through in securing the necessary material to process their insurance claims and said sometimes victims are made to pay huge sums in order to secure Police and medical reports.

The WDoR is an official United Nations observation, held on the third Sunday of November every year to recognise the suffering of road traffic crash victims and the work of support and rescue services.

The theme for this year’s commemoration is “First Responders”, recognizing the selfless men and women who rescue, care for and provide support to victims of road trauma.

“The Police and medical reports are necessary materials you need to process a claim, so you must have it. I know that it is a big challenge to accident victims when such case occurs”, she said.

She appealed to all stakeholders especially the medical fraternity to put a human face to the work that they did and desist from charging traumatized patients unnecessarily before helping them.

“It disturbs me and I k now that it is a concern for a lot of people .When the person is traumatized and you are demanding such a an amount, where are they going to take it from”, she lamented.

She said there should be speedy trial of accident cases such that whatever compensation thereof could be claimed by victims from the insurance companies before it was late.

Mrs Adumuah-Ladzekpo encouraged passengers to be bold and speak against drivers who drive recklessly on the road saying “as passengers, we have a duty of care”.

Ms Linda Affotey-Annag, Regional Head of the NRSA said the Day offered an opportunity for drawing attention to the scale of emotional and economic devastation caused by road traffic crashes.

She said it provided a solemn opportunity to reflect on those who had been lost or irreversibly impacted by road trauma, so often dehumanized into a series of lifeless numbers, and to reconnect with the rationale for achieving road safety.

She said the Central Region continuously records high spates of crashes and casualties and is ranked fifth in the country.

Ms Affotey-Annag said between January and October, 2020, a total of 768 cases had been reported involving 1,248 vehicles with 174 pedestrian knocked downs.

As a result, 208 people were killed and 1194 were maimed in various degrees of injures.

Compared with the same period, she said the Region was contributing about 6.4 percent of the cases reported, 6.1percent vehicles involved in the crashes, 7.9 percent pedestrian knockdowns, 10 percent fatalities and 9.6 percent injuries.

This, she said was quite disturbing particularly for the involvement of vehicles associated with public transportation.

She said road accidents had negative effect on productivity and as such Ghana lost about 1.6 percent of its GDP to road traffic crashes annually because affected persons were usually the active working group between the ages of 15-55 years.

Representative from the Ghana Red Cross Society, the Police MTTD, the Ghana National Association of Passengers took turns to address the gathering and called on all to join the efforts to reduce road accidents in the country.

Mr Patrick Azenyeka, a crash victim was presented with an undisclosed amount of money to take care of his medical bills.

The team later paid a visit to road crash victims receiving treatment at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital (CCTH) and made a donation to them.