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Faith Katete-Herald Reporter

Zimbabwe has made significant progress in adopting new road signs which will be fully harmonised with the rest of SADC region by the 2025, Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe (TSCZ) spokesperson Mr Ernest Muchena said yesterday.

In a bid to reduce road carnage caused by misinterpretation of traffic signs and signals in the region, SADC countries have agreed to introduce uniform signage in the region.

“We acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of people who do enter the country driving. 

“Since Zimbabwe is a signatory, we also accepted that we will adopt same signage.

“Sadc signs are the best for illiterate people and non-English speaking people said Mr Muchena.

“One feature about Sadc signs is that most of them they don’t have words they are more of pictorials signs which means that any driver who comes from the other regions who may not be English speaking will be able interpret those signs correctly and because Zimbabwe is a tourist destination we will also have drivers from other countries being able to interpret the road signs.”

Mr Muchena urged local authorities to erect new signs and signals as required by Statutory 41 of 2016 and SADC design manual.

“I would like to appeal to all local authorities, including our own department of traffic, all urban councils and rural districts councils to ensure that they erect the new signs and signals and other devices as required by Statutory 41 of 2016 and the SADC design manual,” Mr Muchena said. 

“Up to now there are old signs and the newly adopted signs because there is need for the transition process so we gave Statutory instrument of 41 to have a transitional period of 8 years which means by 31 December 2025 every road sign that is old will have been removed and we will be using the newly road sign so right now they are being used simultaneously but we are urging local authorities road authorities to ensure that each time they replace a road sign they must replace it with a SADC compliance sign.

“We are quite pleased by the Plumtree-Bulawayo-Harare-Mutare road, the road is full of SADC signs as it was constructed after the enactment of the signs so we are appealing to road authorities to ensure that they use SADC compliance signs but come 2025 we will be having totally new signs,” Mr Muchena said.