LTA officers to make presence known

Fiji’s Land Transport Authority is looking to make their presence known on local roads.

LTA chief executive Naisa Tuinaceva said, “Increasing our presence on the road strengthens our ability to address the concern on the increasing number of fatalities on the roads.”

He also added LTA’s operations are analysed daily to see how effective their service is.

“Our presence on the road is an indication that we do care and continue to advocate on road safety to all members of the public. Vehicle conditions and driver bad behaviour are the two areas that we try to improve on,” Tuinaceva added.

Meanwhile, LTA and the Fiji Police Force are conducting a combine operation which is known as the Red Zone Operation between Sigatoka and Ba.

Since the beginning of the operation from the 19 September there were 944 traffics infringement notices issued by LTA officers with 1194 defect notice orders and 63 impounded vehicles.

Offences noted include speeding, careless driving, expired driving licence and failure to abide by traffic laws.

“We do know that the problem that’s faced out there on our roads is all based on driver’s attitude. These are bad driver behaviour, traffic law breakers and high disrespect of the law. This must be stop and the only way for the authority to deal with this is to exercise the suspension of driving licence,” Tuinaceva said.

The LTA urges drivers to be more careful and vigilant while driving because of adverse weather conditions and advises pedestrians to wear white reflective colours while walking on the side of the road.

By Indrani Krishna