Senegal/Tambacounda: local councillors and neighbourhood delegates learn about collaborative and road safety

The prefect of the Tambacounda department, Alioune Badara Mbengue, chaired a capacity-building workshop on collaborative safety and road safety on Thursday, attended by local elected officials and quarry delegates.

"We convened municipal councillors and neighborhood delegates, women and young people to talk about collaborative safety and especially road safety [...]", said the departmental chief executive. and especially road safety [...]", declared the head of the departmental executive.

Road safety in particular "is an important theme for the city of Tambacounda, given its geographical position, which means that many trucks travel through the city every day [...] with risks linked to the road safety of children during the school year", he emphasized.

Alioune Badara Mbengue was speaking on the sidelines of the workshop, held at the Maison de la Femme de Tambacounda in the presence of the town's local authorities.

The prefect warned of the high number of accidents regularly involving "Jakarta" motorcycle cab drivers.

"There are a huge number of accidents in Tambacounda", he said, noting that "Jakarta motorcycles are the first to suffer a large number of accidents, both in the city of Tambacounda and in the other communes of the department.in the other communes of the department, and sometimes we see accidents that are often very violent", noted Alioune Badara Mbengue.

He also mentioned the case of tanker trucks, which also cause many accidents in Tambacounda, sometimes right in the city center, according to the prefect.

"There's a risk here that requires special care, and that's why we're insisting on raising awareness to prevent these situations from causing larger-scale disasters," he declared.

The theme of the workshop is "Strengthening the resilience of populations and local authorities in the face of external and internal security threats". It is part of the SENRESILII project, funded by the European Union and implemented by the NGO TAATAAN, in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

According to Alyoune Badara Diop, consultant with the NGO TAATAAN, the SENRESILIENCE II project aims to strengthen the community resilience of populations in terms of security.

"Tambacounda is a corridor with a lot at stake in terms of security [...] the region borders countries where sThe region borders countries where there are global security problems, so to anticipate situations of this nature, we felt it was important to focus on the community dimension of security.In order to anticipate situations of this nature, we felt it was important to focus on the community dimension of people's resilience in terms of security, and this is what the SENRESILIENCEII program, which operates in Tambacounda and Kédougou, is all about", he explained.

The consultant pointed out that a workshop focusing on the management of woody forest resources as a security tool had been organized in the commune of Komoti, in the department of Goudiry, in conjunction with the SENRESILIENCEII program.

The commune of Kahène, in the department of Koumpentoum, on the border with the Gambia, also hosted a workshop to raise awareness among the local population "on issues of land security", as did the commune of Koumpentoum, on the border with the Gambia. The same was true of the Payar commune, where discussions were held "on cohabitation between pastoralists and farmers in the context of the transhumance dynamic".

Workshops on "juvenile delinquency" and "the circulation of illicit products" are also planned in the communes of Koussanar and Niani Toucouleur, which also borders Gambia, according to the consultant.

According to the consultant from the NGO TAATAAN, these discussions demonstrated that each community in the Tambacounda region has its own safety imperatives.curity imperatives, underscoring the need to pool efforts to support administrative authorities in risk prevention.

"We're in a period of peace, so we need to think about how to prevent risks by identifying them first, so that we can help each other and support the authorities in reacting and taking action.We're in a period of peace, so we need to think about how to prevent risks by identifying them first, so that we can help each other and support the authorities in reacting and taking appropriate charge of this security issue to prevent these risks from becoming threats", he concluded.

Source: aps.sn/