High Commissioner Mr. Ronny Bernadina explained why
“Year 2005 was not a good year for the police force of Aruba”
DIARIO Aruba
01/11/2006

ORANJESTAD (AAN) – Diario approached High Commissioner Mr. Ronny Bernadina to find out about what 2005 signified for the police force, what they achieved and what didn’t go well.

High Commissioner Bernadina explained that the year 2005 was not good for KPA. Although they still don’t have all the details, when the statistics are out, they will publish these in detail, but in what relates to his own experience, he considers 2005 as a very troublesome year.

In regards to traffic accidents, Mr. Bernadina let it be known that in Oranjestad there were 3.172 accidents and very regrettably there were fatal cases, with a total of 9 killed in traffic, where three of these were motorcyclists, 4 were drivers of the cars, and 1 was a passenger. Compared with 2004, this decreased a little, from 14 to 9, but according to the Commissioner, this is nothing to brag about either.

High Commissioner Bernadina underlined that traffic is still unsafe, and this is due to high speeds (racing?) and this increased more in the year 2005. The forecast he has is that in 2006 also, drivers will try this, but police have measure for this situation.

Additionally, motorcyclists are using a lot of civil disobedience by not using their helmets and this too will have police’s attention this year. They will start a verbal process, and at a certain time they will take the license of the motorcyclists in question if it should get to this.

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The High Commissioner indicated that quad racers were also a growing problem last year, where at certain times they had to be stopped for speeding, and there was even a case where a person passed away in an accident due to not being able to operate the vehicle properly.

Personally, if it were in his hands, High Commissioner Mr. Ronny Bernadina would eliminate all quad racers from the public streets and would not give permission to operate these on public streets, but would allow them to run where they would not disturb our environment, and it isn’t an obstacle at the national park or other places.

According to the High Commissioner, in the U.S. and other countries, all these vehicles are regulated, but in Aruba they only have one door open to them. In any case, police will control them and especially in the general traffic there will be a lot of control this year.

Last year there were funds destined for control, but due to unforeseen circumstances, such as the case of Natalee and other unplanned activities, there was not enough in KPA’s budget to be able to implement this.