Haiti, IDB launch road safety campaign

-at reopening of highway

Haitian President Michel Martelly and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) president Luis Alberto Moreno have announced the completion of the US$70M, 80km-long Route Nationale 1 (RN1) one of Haiti’s principal highways.

During the ceremony to mark the completion of the rehabilitation and reopening of the road, Martelly and Moreno launched a campaign to improve road safety. According to a press release, the IDB, Haiti’s leading multilateral donor provided the said sum to repair the stretch of road between Titanyen, outside Port-au-Prince, and the city of Saint Marc. “Transportation infrastructure is one of the largest components in the Bank’s US$ 1billion project portfolio on this country,” the release said. RN1 links the Haitian capital with the north of the country. Its rehabilitation will help reduce travel times by half, enabling a quicker transportation of passenger and goods. The work was done by Ingenieria Estrella, a Dominican construction company.

The release noted that traffic accidents are the leading cause of deaths among young people in Latin America and the Caribbean, where low-income countries such as Haiti rose between one and two per cent of their GDP a year due to the economic cost of crash-related deaths and injuries. “This is a preventable tragedy,” Moreno said, adding “That is why we are taking action. We are incorporating road safety into all our road transport projects and we are partnering with others to spread this message.”

Several donors are financing different aspects of the campaign: the Korean government financed its design and implementation; the United States Agency for International Development is providing 5,000 helmets and training motorcycle taxi drivers; the International Organisation for Migration developed communication materials for public dissemination and 3M is donating road signage and reflective vests. Sesame Street Workshop is donating Sesame Street colouring books with road safety themes.

The campaign’s local partners include the Lucienne Deschamps Foundation, the municipalities of Saint Marc, Arachaie and Cabaret and many local media outlets. The campaign’s messages will be disseminated in many ways, besides the traditional roadside billboards. Samuel Dalembert, the only Haitian-born players in the National Basketball Association, will serve as spokesperson. Michael Benjamin, a young star of Haiti’s kompa music wrote and interpreted the campaign’s song with the Petites Chanteurs, a renowned choir from local music school Holy Trinity.