To streamline and facilitate traffic for schoolchildren, the municipal police of Bobo-Dioulasso have initiated an awareness campaign for road users on the occasion of the start of the school year. We followed a municipal police team in the awareness field on October 3, 2023.
During this awareness session today, municipal police officers went out in teams and stormed the city’s major intersections and the roads leading to educational establishments. Very early this morning around 6:40 a.m., we arrived at the woman’s place. The mission is led by Haris Sanou who explains to us. “We are here this morning to raise awareness as we do many times. But this awareness is on the occasion of the start of the school year, because we have noticed that several students leave towns or villages where traffic is not very smooth, to come and study in Bobo. Yet here, many road users refuse to respect the highway code. It is our duty to do our best to allow children to cross the roads peacefully,” he said. Indeed, this awareness is bearing fruit.
Thanks to it, getting around becomes easier for younger children. One of the supervisors of the Le Savoir school complex gives us his assessment of this measure. He says he is “delighted with this awareness, because the municipal police come to our aid especially for toddlers who have no knowledge of the highway code. In addition, when they are not there, we ourselves have to go out to guide the students. So their presence helps us enormously.”
Barthélémy Traoré, municipal police officer adds that “it is a great pleasure for us to raise awareness, because road users keep pace and children are also spared from road accidents. So, we are happy to be able to be a support at this start of the school year and outside of the start of the school year we run awareness campaigns from time to time.” Note, however, that despite all the interventions by the municipal police, the situation is complicated because the lack of citizenship among certain road users is significant. People intentionally run red lights and others even dare to disrespect police teams in the event of traffic violations.
Salimata Samiratou SYLLA/Internship
