Yuletide Season: Uzum Decries Incessant Fire Outbreaks, Road Accidents

Yuletide Season: Uzum Decries Incessant Fire Outbreaks, Road Accidents

 

By Johnson Ebigide

 

Asaba: Director-General of the Delta State Orientation Bureau, Barrister Eugene Azuka Uzum, has urged for caution and discipline towards preventing fire outbreaks and road accidents in the state as the Yuletide draws closer.

Barrister Uzum stated this during a radio phone-in programme, ‘Wetin Government Dey Do’, on the topic, “Preventing Fire Outbreaks And Road Accidents In the Yuletide Season”, with the Delta State Broadcasting Service in Asaba.

He opined that there was the need to continue to sensitise the general public on preventable causes of fire outbreaks, particularly now that the Yuletide season with its attendant rush and bustles had set in, saying that bush burning, careless discarding of smoked cigarette butts, dispensing of petroleum products to vehicles at the filling stations while engines of the vehicle were still running, making calls in the kitchen while cooking with a gas cooker, lightning up a candle stick and leaving it to burn while one was asleep and many other careless practises that could trigger off fire outbreaks should be shunned.

The orientation helmsman decried the incessant falling of
motor tankers on highways and roads in cities and towns, spilling flammable petroleum products that had resulted in serious fire outbreaks that had taken many lives and property worth several millions of naira in some parts of the country.

Speaking further, Barrister Uzum maintained that many road accidents could be traced to carelessness, overspending, drunkenness and overloading of vehicles by drivers, adding that lack of regular maintenance of vehicles and medical check up to ascertain fitness of drivers, particularly concerning their sight, were issue that should be addressed to forestall incessant carnage on roads in the country.

The Orientation boss hinted that various relevant stakeholders, including religious bodies, would be engaged in the sensitisation drive of the bureau towards curbing social vices, the menace of fire outbreaks and road accidents in the state, adding that it had become imperative to loudly but clearly drum home the danger inherent in attitudinal indiscipline of some residents in the state.

Several listeners who called in from withing the state and beyond to air their views on the issues thanked the state government for establishing the bureau to sensitise the general public on societal vices, just as they commended the Delta State Broadcasting Service in Asaba for keeping the public abreast with the policy thrust of the Okowa Administration through the grassroots oriented programme, ‘Wetin Government Dey Do’ .