Hanoi (VNA) – Winners of a contest on the official slogan of the “Doraemon with traffic safety in Vietnam” 2017-2018 programme was announced on January 18.

A slogan penned by Tran Thanh Van, a fourth grader of Doan Thi Diem primary school in Hanoi, was selected to appear on posters to raise public awareness of traffic safety nationwide in 2017-2018.

She will receive a prize worth 2.2 million VND (200 USD) and a round-trip air ticket from Vietnam to Tokyo presented by Japan Airlines.

Initiated by Mainichi Newspaper Co. Ltd, the contest on the official slogan of the traffic safety programme has been held in Japan over the past 52 years, raising people and students’ awareness of traffic regulations and safety.

In Vietnam, it was co-organised by the Mainichi Newspaper, the Traffic Police Department under the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Education and Training.

In the second time, the contest received 104,966 entries, four times higher than that of the previous year. Of the number, there were 96,871 slogans submitted by children aged 6-10 and the remainder by those aged 11 upwards. The organisers selected the most 20 outstanding slogans for awards.

Lauding the winners of the contest, Japanese Ambassador to Vietnam Kunio Umeda hoped that the “Doraemon with traffic safety in Vietnam” programme will continue to enhance traffic safety for Vietnamese people and promote the Vietnam-Japan friendship.

Doraemon, a robot cat, is a famous Japanese animation character among children in Asia, including Vietnam, and has served as a symbol of traffic safety for decades in Japan.

Japan first launched a traffic safety programme featuring Doraemon 30 years ago, when about 15,000 Japanese people were killed by traffic accidents every year. Japan is now one of the countries with the safest traffic network in the world, while its people have very good road sense. The number of traffic-linked deaths has shrunk to around 4,000 a year.-VNA