A view of traffic in Qatar.
Among many challenges the Traffic Department is facing in making its awareness campaign effective are the language barrier and cultural diversity, said a senior official at the Traffic Department .
“As we want to raise traffic awareness among residents, we face major challenges like the diversity of languages and cultures. We are dealing with a big number of people talking in different languages and their culture and traditions are also different,” Brigadier Mohammed Saad Al Kharji, Director of Traffic Department, said.
“Other countries deal only with one or two languages but here many residents do not understand English and Arabic. We have to communicate with many communities in their slang languages,” Al Kharji added.
He said that the department usually focuses on schools and 'we have partnerships with a number of companies and institutions to raise road safety awareness among students'.
Lieutenant Abdul Wahid Al Anzi, from the Traffic Awareness section, said that the section had set focus on conducting awareness campaigns and visits to workers at their accommodations.
“In collaboration with the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Interior, which has provided us translators in different languages, we provide many lectures and distribute booklets to workers to raise awareness," Al Anzi said.
For example, he said, the department run campaigns during Ramadan because many workers sit together during Iftar. "We avail the opportunity to raise traffic awareness among them especially about how to cross roads because they become victims of accidents mostly due to their lack of knowledge about traffic safety," he added.
"We also focus on the Industrial Area due to the high number of workers there. In addition, we visit workers’ clubs with translators of different languages to communicate with them about the traffic safety."
He said that most of the run-over accidents involving pedestrians occur at night and in winter which had longer nights compared to other months.
