Transport Department Plans to Increase Night Patrols on Highways

Over the weekend, Belizeans were shaken by the news of the country’s deadliest road accident in recent years. A tragic collision in San Ignacio claimed the lives of ten people, including a four-year-old child. This heartbreaking incident comes on the heels of several other road fatalities, such as the death of Miriam “Ms. Pretty” Cordon, who lost her life after a van collided into an SUV she was traveling in accident last week. These are just a few of the many tragic losses Belizeans have faced this year. The Belize Transport Department is striving to address these issues, but as Chief Transport Officer Leon Gentle points out, they are grappling with limited resources.

 

Leon Gentle, Chief Transport Officer

“There are several things that we’re hoping that we can employ. We have been in dialogue with the police department as well as the municipal authorities for us to increase our presence, especially during the night time that has been the challenge for us from the Department of Transport as it relates to doing our night patrols. And we’ve done this. This challenge has always been primarily because  the issue. Is the security of our offices that we want to ensure their safety as well. So we always collaborated with the department of the police department to ensure that our officers along with their officers are doing our night patrols and doing our night patrols and vehicle checkpoints. And so while this may seem like a response, it has always been it has always been the fact that we have been collaborating with the police department. While our operations may not go twenty-four or through the night, we do have checkpoints in the hotspots primarily on the western corridor and the northern corridor up until  Sometimes all the way up until ten o’clock at night, so there is that level of we have been having those level of response as it relates to nightly checkpoints, but it’s something that we need to revisit to see if we can increase our awareness and presence on the highways.”

 

Britney Gordon

“What would you say is the main challenge that the department is facing right now in order to counteract these accidents? As police told us earlier, in the case of the St. Ignacio RTA, the driver ran the checkpoint. So how do you manage that?”

 

Leon Gentle

“So it’s a matter of resources. We’ve been working on to see how we can look at the resources that we have doing self-assessment to look at areas that we can improve on one area that we have identified is human resources. We need to increase the officers that we have in our enforcement unit, as well as we need to increase the number of vehicles that we have to effectively patrol the highways, both during the day and at night.”