Actors in the road transport industry have been tasked to uphold professionalism and standards to safeguard the nation’s human resource capital. Executive Director of the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), Noble Appiah, says transport operators are as duty-bound as the regulatory and law enforcement agencies to give critical thought to the socio-economic impact of road crashes in order to act right. Road traffic crashes costs Ghana an estimated 1.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – as at 2009, the country had lost $26.17 billion through accidents. Most of the recorded fatalities have been attributed to public and commercial vehicles – buses and mini-buses. Mr. Appiah has been meeting with interest groups in Kumasi to sensitize them on pragmatic measure to reverse the upward trend in road traffic crashes, which are coming at the heels of current rising trends in population growth and vehicle ownership. The NRSC has developed a strategic framework dubbed ‘National Road Safety Strategy III’, whose objective and implementation are in line with the UN Decade of Action 2011-2020. The aim is to halt the increasing trends of fatalities and injuries by 2015 and reducing same by 50 percent by the year 2020. Mr. Appiah told Luv Fm the Commission is taking a cue from the aviation industry in the establishment and enforcement of basic licensing and standards in the road transport sector. This, he said, should be addressed in the new Road Traffic Regulation. The NRSC Executive Director however enjoined players in the road industry to imbibe professionalism and ethics in their routine activities. “It is important that as a driver or transport operator you have a code of practice and that’s one of the things we will do at the Road Safety Commission; to try and visit all the institutions. We’re going to publish the standards that we expect every operator to adhere to”, stated Mr. Appiah.