SUCCESS, St James — President of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) Dr Garth Anderson has welcomed the move by the e ducation ministry to have high school students trained and licensed as motor vehicle drivers before leaving school.

“Well, I think that would be a very good initiative. What it means is that we would get our students from pretty early to be au fait with the rules and regulations governing how we operate on the road,” Dr Anderson argued.

Education Minister Senator Ruel Reid told reporters in St James recently that students between the ages of 16 and 18 years old are to benefit under the Career Advancement Programme (CAP).

“There has been a call for us to ensure that our students graduating from high school have a driver’s licence. And, we are happy to report that starting with our CAP programme, we will be rolling out a programme starting this year so that there is driver education embedded in the curriculum — so when our students do graduate from our school system they are licensed to drive properly,” said Reid.

Dr Anderson argued that while there are attempts to treat the carnage problem on the roads on a long-term basis, there is a need for a short- to medium-term plan.

For this reason, the JTA president said he is of the opinion that a national campaign around the new Road Traffic Act is also needed.

“I would shift the focus right away to treating with the new Road Traffic Act to ensure that the public is in tune with what it is all about, so that we can stem the level of fatality on our roads,” he stressed.

Dr Anderson was speaking to reporters in St James recently, following last week’s deadly crash along the ‘Elegant Corridor’ which left three John Rollins Success Primary School students and the driver of the motor car in which they were travelling dead.