Adele Willie 3 June 2022
Vanuatu will be joining other countries in the world to celebrate World International Bicycle day today.
Vanuatu Bicycle Federation (VBF) will be celebrating for the first time the World Bicycle Day today at Feiawa Park (Sea Front) in Port Vila.
VBF is registered under VASANOC and headed by its long-time member Carlos Noronha.
Mr. Noronha says bicycle registration lately was not active because there is not much activity for them, but he bought himself a bicycle and started engaging with youths of Erakor bridge and they started organizing fundraising. From there Vasanoc asked him to draft a report to the Oceania Federations of Cyclists because they are part of the International Cycling Federations that are based in Switzerland consisting of 200 countries worldwide, and they decided to support Vanuatu.
“Even with this Pandemic, we had a few zoom meetings, and we made a few proposals for what we would need, and of course, we would need bicycles and we put together a proposal to the solidarity grand form Oceania Federation and now we have 10 DMX bicycles and we will have the opportunity to send three Ni-Vans in July to Fiji for a coaching training”, Noronha told Daily Post Sports.
“In the beginning, it was a bit awkward to talk about cyclists because the federations were asking for me to send athletes overseas but just because I don’t know where are the athletes, so we had to start everything from the beginning again,” Noronha says.
According to Noronha, Vanuatu Police Force (VPF) will be assisting the VBF celebration to mark the World International Bicycle day today. The VPF has been assisting them since 2020 and also helping the federation with the awareness of safety because bicycle is a form of vehicle that most young people rely on not only that but also a norm of educational safety programs for everyone’s safety.
VBF working closely with Shefa province to engage youths from Mele, Melemat Pango, and Erakor villages to Participate in today’s events, and because it’s a school day so they also asked the Ministry of Education to make it optional and the responsibility of parents and teachers to allow the students to be part of the one-day program.
Bicycle is the most energy, efficient means of a vehicle that can go from places where cars and trucks cannot go, and also is a none pollution element, and most of all a means of reducing NCD’s and different types of diseases to keep everyone safe and healthy.
VBF is engaging with three rural communities because they have enough space to carry out their activities that’s, Pango Mele and Erakor the main idea is to help them to organizes their clubs and groups of bicycles.
VBF wants every area the rural and communities to be part of the Federations.
“The program will be kicking off at 9:30 am, then 10:30 am there will be speeches from and then later presentation from VBF with the new DMX bike distributions and kicks off the program with the help of the Vanuatu Municipality,” Noronha says.
Vanuatu Police Force (VPF) will also be part of the program in terms of awareness, l safety, and educational program.
VPF Road Safety Inspector Edward Kalura says, VBF has applied for a road permit and was approved by the Minister for VBF to occupy the main street was 9:30 am to Sea Front.
“Police trafficking definition, a rider is already considered as a driver itself, so every rider in those three locations (Mele,Pango, and Erakor) some of our officers will be staged in those different locations to escort the riders to the main center which is Sea Front because the VBF has requested for VPF to assist them,” Kalura says.
According to Kalura, any interested riders wanted to join in have to contact Carlos to join from these three locations.
“We are looking at hundreds of riders today, so there will be a very busy day so our officers will be in those different locations and we also issuing different traffic signs to make sure that the traffic will go along with those signs and flow with it till we reached the final destination at Sea Front,”Kalura says.
“There are different riders or drivers male and female, we have to respect the genders whether its male or female, because everyone has right to ride and drive, with VPF Road Safety theme for this year, its YUMI SEREM ROD,” Kalura reiterated.
Kalura explains that a vehicle driver has to be 18 years above and a motorcycle is 14 to 16 years above but to do with the bicycle is 14 years old according to the traffic act to ride on public roads.
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