Shell Malaysia today announced that it will launch a new road safety programme in 2016, at the national closing ceremony of its iconic Shell Traffic Games (“STG”) today. The event drew over 500 primary and secondary school students from all over Malaysia, to learn about road safety in an engaging and fun way over two days.
Speaking about the event and Shell’s future plans for road safety education, Qamar Wan-Noor, Business Opportunity Manager for Shell Malaysia’s downstream division, said, “We are very proud of what we have achieved with the Shell Traffic Games for the past 58 years. Shell has made inroads into helping school students understand the importance of road safety and the role they play in spreading awareness. With this strong foundation in place, Shell is now looking into other areas where we can help improve road safety consciousness, reducing traffic-related injuries and death.”
Elaborating further, Qamar said, “It was recently reported that youths between the ages of 16 and 25 contribute to one-third of road accident fatalities in the country. This is clearly a situation that Shell wants to positively impact, given our long-standing experience and concern in the area of road safety management. We are in the midst of developing a programme to address this and hope to announce it in 2016. We are also looking forward to building on our long-standing relationships with its partners in the government and private sector for the new programme.”
Puan Rozainum binti Ahmad, Co-curriculum and Arts Section Director of Malaysia’s Ministry of Education, said, “Shell has laid a strong foundation for a programme that continues to draw the interest and attention of school students in an area as important as road safety. We thank Shell for all these decades of partnership and look forward to inculcating road-safety consciousness in future generations.”
Launched in 1957, the Shell Traffic Games, is held in partnership with the Ministry of Education, the Road Safety Department of Malaysia, and various government agencies like the police, local authorities, as well as auxiliary bodies. Events are held throughout the year in most state capitals and practically every district and division in Sabah and Sarawak. Since its inception over 58 years ago, more than a million Malaysian students have taken part in the games.
Prizes are awarded to winning primary and secondary schools for the best road safety performance. This year, the primary school category was won by the contingent from Terengganu, followed by the contingents from Sarawak and Kuala Lumpur at second and third place, respectively. In the secondary school category, the contingent from Terengganu was declared the champion, followed by the contingent from Sarawak in second place and the contingent from Kedah in third place. Contingents are made up of the each state’s top competitors in their respective state-level Shell Traffic Games events.
The games are conducted on a specially equipped site in a safe location using pedal cars, bicycles and pedestrians. As part of the programme, participating schools are required to pass written tests on read safety. In subsequent practical or on-road tests, participants are awarded merit points for complying with road safety regulations, or conversely given demerits and issued traffic violation summons by real traffic police officers when they break road safety regulations or commit driving offences.
