The first vocational school for the training of trainers and commercial vehicle drivers in Ethiopia was inaugurated today.
Inaugurating Misale Driver Training Academy, Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said shortage of skilled drivers is causing traffic accidents and road fatalities in Ethiopia’s booming economy as it heavily relies on road transport.
Around 75 percent of fatal road traffic accidents occur due to errors and incompetence of drivers. With 65 fatalities per 10,000 vehicles, Ethiopia has one of the highest fatality rates per vehicle in the world, it was learned.
According to Dagmawit, initiatives and projects like Misale Driver Training Academy are very timely and necessary to improve road safety and create jobs.
She pointed out that GTP II focuses on road design and traffic safety to enhance transport and logistics service availability and accessibility for agricultural and industrial products, targeting to double weather road from 110,414km to 220,000km.
Misale Driver Training Academy will train 40 trainees and 20 trainers each year, in addition to 480 employees from other transport companies who will benefit from short-term skill upgrading training on annual basis.
The project will strive to introduce mandatory road safety training, such as defensive driving and awareness campaigns in schools in order to reduce the fatality rates from 65 to 32 in five years’ time according to the target of the government.
The project was reportedly established with the partnership of Selam Children’s Village, UNIDO, SIDA and Volvo Group.
The Misale project grew originally out of the partnership in the former project entitled “Heavy Duty Equipment and Commercial Vehicles Academy (HDECoVA)” an academy in which it was established with the aim of graduating mechanics of heavy duty equipment and commercial vehicles.