USA-EAC conduct conference on developing sustainable transport system
ARUSHA, Tanzania, August 26, 2009/African Press Organization (APO)/ — The EAC Secretariat in collaboration with the United States Department of Transport (US-DoT) is conducting a two-day conference on Sustainable Transport System for the East African Community Partner States from 26-27 August 2009 at the Naura Springs Hotel in Arusha, Tanzania.
The workshop is part of the ongoing collaboration between EAC and US-DoT aimed at improving transport infrastructure services in the region, mooted during the first retreat of the EAC Ministers held in Kampala, Uganda in April 2008. During that retreat, EAC, USA-DoT and US Trade and Development Agency signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (Kampala-MoC) in which it was agreed that the three institutions would dialogue with a view to sharing best practices that would reduce high transportation costs in the region.
In November 2008, a high level delegation consisting of EAC Ministers responsible for Transport and EAC Secretariat officials visited Washington D.C as part fulfillment of the Kampala MoC and this Arusha conference is a continuation of this cooperation.
The ongoing conference is discussing a wide range of issues including among others road safety; facilitation of the disabled to access transport services; urban traffic congestion; sustainable funding of transport systems; developing regional transport corridors and inter-modality of Seaports-Rail-Road; Partnership opportunities and impact on development; and role of technology transfer centres.
The US delegation at the conference are sharing experience with the EAC Partner States’ delegates on how these challenges could be overcome and where possible the methodologies could be replicated in the region. The USA delegation include among others; Dr. Adiele Nwankwo, Senior Vice President, Parsons Brinckerhoff, USA; Shirley Delibero, President DeLibero Transport Strategies, LLC; Roscoe Brown of the Indianapolis Public Transportation Corp; Ron Boenau, Kay Nordstrom and Michael Gordon from the US Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration and Maritime respectively; Dwayne Sampson, Superintendent of Maintenance Operations, New York City Transit Authority; Gary Flunoy, from Valley Metro Rail, Phoenix.
Eng. Abdulrazaq A. Ali, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transport of the Republic of Kenya and Ms Marie Claire Mukasine, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Infrastructure of the Republic of Rwanda are among the over 120 transport stakeholders from the region attending the conference.
SOURCE
East African Community (EAC)
