Rössing Uranium hosted a successful bus driving competition for its drivers today, under the banner Safe Driving Always First.

The aim of the Safe Bus Driving competition is to create awareness and promote safe driving among the Rössing drivers and the general public. Rössing Uranium makes use of 23 48-seater busses on a daily basis to transport about 1000 employees between the mine and Arandis, Swakopmund and Walvis Bay in a safe, efficient, reliable and economical manner.

Annually the mine's busses travel just more than 1,6 million kilometres between the mine and Swakopmund, Walvis Bay and Arandis, transporting our employees safely between home and work on a four panel shift basis.

Rössing Uranium is committed to safe driving not only at work but also at home in our communities. The latter is evident through the company supporting various safe driving awareness campaigns such as the recent Road Safety Indaba at Walvis Bay. We are constantly sensitizing our drivers about safe driving and also upgrading their skills and capabilities through initiatives like today's driver competition. At the same time the event also serves as a platform for our drivers and leaders to interact on skills testing and improvement as well as general team building.

Statistics show that globally approximately 1.2 million people are killed annually in traffic accidents. This is a staggering 3 200 deaths per day, while a further 50 million people are suffering serious injury or permanent disability following traffic accidents.

Following an absence of three years, the mine has now re-introduced its safe driving competition and plans to again make it an annual event, which hopefully in future will include other industry and community stakeholders as well.

This year's event had 14 full time as well as part time bus drivers participating and competing for the honours. The competition involved various routes to test the drivers' skills, among them parallel parking, reverse parking, and included a road test drive with passengers as well as a pre-trip inspection of the bus.

The judging of the event was done by the traffic officials of the Swakopmund Traffic Department, under the leadership of Mr Melvin Cloete and a road safety consultant, Mr Herman Engelbrecht. Participants were all excited, in good spirit and in agreement that it was along overdue event. They suggested that more competitions of this nature be staged, saying that at least it should happen twice a year, not forgetting that it should also be staged at regional, national and international level.

None of the participants went home empty handed. The 14 fulltime and temporary drivers who took part, all received certificates for participating as well as a N$100 purchase voucher each, as a token of appreciation. The gold medal and first prize of N$3 000 went to Leon Beukes, who scored the highest in the event at 89%, and was crowned the Rössing Uranium Safe Bus Driver of the Year. He was followed by Vaatjie Prinsloo (76%) with a silver medal and N$2 000 prize and Abiater Nestor (72%) with a bronze medal and N$1 000 prize.

Rössing Bus Driving competition winners… The first prize of N$3 000 went to Leon Beukes (middle), who scored the highest in the event at 89%, and was crowned the Rössing Uranium Safe Bus Driver of the Year. He was followed by Vaatjie Prinsloo (76%) (right) with a N$2 000 prize and Abiater Nestor (72%) with a N$1 000 prize (left).
Rössing Uranium makes use of 23, 48-seater busses on a daily basis to transport about 1 000 employees between the mine and Arandis, Swakopmund and Walvis Bay in a safe, efficient, reliable and economical manner. Annually the mine's busses travel just more than 1,6 million kilometres.	A competitor moves the bus between two drums in the Width-Estimation section of the competition and points awarded on the distance between drums and the bus.
In the Alley Docking or reverse parking section drivers had to keep the wheels rolling.	All the participates and judges at the Rössing Safe Bus Driving competition held on Saturday, 6 November 2010, at Swakopmund.

Issued by:
Noël Mouton
Manager Business Administration

Enquiries:
Alwyn Lubbe
Superintendent Corporate Communications
Cell 081 122 5201