"As the Department of Roads and Transport, we hopefully believe that you will go out there and become the ambassadors of our law enforcement strategy which shall enhance road safety and prevent the loss of the lives of our people."

This was said by the newly appointed MEC of Roads and Transport in Limpopo, Ms Pinky Kekana, during a graduation ceremony for traffic officers that was held at Manenu Traffic Training College last Friday.

In total, 156 traffic trainees from previously disadvantaged backgrounds received their traffic officer diplomas. Kekana said that the graduation was part of the commitment which her department had made in 2007, to train 500 new traffic officers by 2010. “The officers standing before us today will be going to our roads, where they will ensure that offenders are brought to heel and taken to task. I am convinced that the graduating traffic officers understand the excruciating responsibility which will be entrusted to them,” she said.

“We are confident that this initiative will stand us in good stead in that it will give resonance to our strategy also aimed at increasing visibility of our traffic officers on our roads,” highlighted Kekana.

Among the 156 traffic trainees, 19 were coming from the neighbouring North West Province.

Kekana urged community members and motorists who attended the event to join hands with the department in the endeavour to make roads safer. “Be part of the solution. Road safety begins with you. We cannot have safer roads if our people do not assume their responsibility and play their part,” said Kekana.

Asked where the new traffic officers would be posted, the spokesperson for the Department of Road and Transport, Mr Boiki Tsedu, said that they were going to be deployed at traffic departments in various municipalities across the province. “This will also be another way of creating jobs, as the programme itself was initiated with an aim of alleviating poverty in the previously disadvantaged and poverty-stricken rural areas in our province,” he said. According to Tsedu, the trainees were trained for free, without having to pay anything.

MEC Kekana urged the graduates to remember at all times that they are the servants of the people. “The discipline, commitment, dedication and loyalty that have made you go through this course successfully, should go beyond this day,” he said.