The launch ceremony was held at the Great National Assembly Square in Chisinau, the capital of the Republic of Moldova. The Automobile Club of Moldova was one of the main initiators and organisers of the event together with the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Transport, Road Traffic Police, etc. The event was attended by lots of people, among who were government officials, representatives of national and international organisations, nongovernmental organisations. The Union of Motorists of Moldova, Society of the disabled, students, schoolchildren and their teachers, doctors, sportsmen and cultural figures also participated at the event.
The ceremony was opened by the official speech of the Prime-Minister who declared that:“ In the Republic of Moldova road safety is an important issue, which is becoming a priority in order to have a health society and economy. Our country made big steps for improving the actual situation like formation of the National Council for Road Safety, (of which member is ACM), and adoption of the Plan of Actions regarding Road Safety Issues and that Moldova will move on acting in this field.”
Emma Maclennan, the director of EASST, mentioned that:” We must not forget that already road injuries are the number 1 killer of young people aged 10-24 in every region of the world. Children are one third of the world’s population – but they are all of our future. Today we have an opportunity to make our roads a safer place for everyone.”
Iarno Habicht, representative from the World Health Organization, and other international representatives and national officials spoke about the significance of this event and about the next steps that should be undertaken.
After the speeches, students and pupils from different schools and universities organized a social march holding flags and balloons with the image of the tag. In this big march, throughout the capital the Police Orchestra also participated.
Students from the College of Transports built a big live tag, being dressed in yellow, in which the Prime – Minister and all the officials had the chance to make photos.
Pupils from primary schools had the opportunity to show their talent by organizing a thematic picture exhibition and to find out new important rules for them by visiting the small town for children, which was like an imitation of real roads and road traffic participants. The elder ones performed some scenes regarding the behavior of pedestrians, acting as young traffic police officers in order to raise the awareness of all teenagers on this matter.
A lot of attention, the hundreds of guests paid to the exhibition of retro cars and to the one of the evolution of public transport. We had the honor to
have like guests some national poets, Titus Stirbu and Ion Anton, who told the public special lyrics dedicated to this big event.
It should be noted to mention that the Launch event of the Decade of Action 2011-2020 had a wide media coverage, even a special TV show on Publika TV, with the participation of the ACM, Road Police and other stakeholders, was dedicated to the given event. On 12 of May there was organized a press conference which was held at the Ministry of Health, with the participation of all the ministers and Automobile Club of Moldova, entitled “Deaths and road traumas on Moldovan roads”, where the next steps of activities within the new Decade were discussed.
The support of the Government of the Republic of Moldova, important road safety stakeholders and of our national and international partners was primordial. All of them support and promote the road safety issue through the first priorities in the national agenda and will try to combine all the efforts to maintain the safety on roads at the highest level.
