The 2nd Road Safety Journalism Workshop was held in Chattogram on Tuesday focusing on 鈥楽peeding as a Risk Factor, Data and Solutions Journalism鈥�.
Organised by the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety, in collaboration with the Chattogram City Corporation and Vital Strategies, the daylong Workshop was held in a restaurant at GEC intersection where a total of 18 journalists from different media outlets took part.
Gias Uddin, panel mayor of CCC spoke as chief guest and emphasised the importance of public awareness campaigns and enforcement of traffic laws to address the growing challenges posed by road safety.
The programme was also addressed by Masud Ahmed, Additional Commissioner (traffic) of Chattogram Metropolitan Police, Mr. Atique, Assistant Director, Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) and Suganthi Saravanan, Program Officer of Vital Strategies-Singapore.
The programme was also presented by CCC chief engineer Shahin Ul Islam Chowdhury and M Labib Tazwan Utshab, Initiative Coordinator of BIGRS-Chattogram.
The workshop was divided into several sessions while Shirin Wadhaniya, Research Associate and Zabir Hosen, assistant scientist at the John Hopkins International Injury Research Unit-JHIIRU, USA discussed data sources for road traffic crashes, injuries and deaths.
Farzana Islam Toma, Consultant of World Resources Institute-WRI discussed the importance of design perspective for road safety. Kazi Md. Shifun Newaz, surveillance coordinator, BIGRS shared road crash data from Chattogram Road Safety Report 2020-2022.
Aminul Islam Sujon, Technical Adviser, Vital Strategies, and Md Mahamudul Hasan (communications officer of BIGRS) discussed solution journalism, importance of communication and mass media campaign.
Ezequiel Dantas (Zaca), deputy director and Miric Pala, senior technical adviser from the surveillance team at Vital Strategies spoke on the importance of data towards taking policy initiatives to ensure road safety at this workshop.