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Engineer Maitha bin Udai, CEO of RTA’s Traffic and Roads Agency, renewed RTA’s commitment to its responsibilities to foster the traffic awareness culture among all community segments in Dubai, including mothers, parents and children. She pointed out that the RTA attached great importance to the safety of families and individuals, starting from newborns up to senior citizens, noting that during the past years the Agency had conducted many events tailored to those segments.
“We have been designing awareness programs befitting various age brackets in Dubai early on, and in 2009 we launched the Child Safety Program focusing on educating mothers about necessary measures to protect children against risks, be it public health or traffic safety issues. The program includes many events, most notably an awareness booklet named Child Safety distributed to mothers throughout the year,” she continued.
According to bin Udai, the first edition of the booklet was issued in 2009, and re-printed at the end of 2011, where 10,000 copies of the two editions were distributed to mothers in Dubai hospitals and health centers.
More recently, the Traffic and Roads Agency has revised and updated the data of the booklet as part of the "Generations Safety is a Shared Responsibility" project; which is one of the key child safety-oriented projects undertaken in cooperation with the Dubai Health Authority, Dubai Police and Emirates Transport. The joint team reviewed comments and suggestions received from the target group about the booklet and conducted several amendments to the content and design of the booklet, thus giving a fresh look to the thoroughly revised & updated edition.
“The bilingual Arabic/English booklet comprises two main parts; the first, which was prepared in collaboration with the Dubai Health Authority, covers child’s growth stages, care, nutrition and breast feeding. The second part contains information about child safety such as child safety seats, and protecting children against potential risks while onboard vehicles, at homes or with strangers, in addition to tips to parents monitoring children playing at parks or with domestic animals,” she noted.
“The booklet, added bin Udai, is part of the Child Safety Program targeting mothers & children, which includes delivering educative lectures, distributing informative leaflets, and registering mothers in the Child Safety Seats Draw, where more than 50 child safety seats have been distributed since the program was launched.
“Questionnaires conducted in hospitals and health centers indicated that the satisfaction rating among targeted mothers under the Child Safety Program in 2013 was as high as 95%. Provisional estimates obtained from representatives of child seat selling companies indicated a growth in sales recently, which signals a higher traffic awareness among parents who have now become aware of the importance of seating their babies on dedicated child safety seats,” added the CEO of RTA Traffic and Roads Agency.
Bin Udai called upon parents to pay close attention to the movement of their children since most run-over accidents happen due to negligence, ignorance about children being in the vicinity of vehicles or failing to hold children by hand when crossing streets, or existing homes, malls or parks.
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