Metro Buses Falling Apart?

Barely one year after the introduction of the Metro Mass Transport System to ease the plight of commuters in the country, some 50 of those yellow coloured buses have broken down and left in the garage of the operators for lack of general maintenance as a result of non-existent spare parts.
A large number of them have also been grounded for what should have been very minor repair works but has turned out to be problems enough to render the buses unworthy for road use.
The problem is as a result of the non-availability of qualified mechanics to work on the Fiat buses donated to the Ghanaian government by its Italian counterpart to cushion commuters against the hush traffic situation in the country.
Officials at the Government Technical Training Center (GTTC) Headquarters at Kaneshie told the “Network Herald” that the issue has become a tall order because of the age of the buses. They pointed out that the buses were manufactured some three decades ago in the 70s and have really been faced out of the transport routine of the country of origin. They explained that because they have been faced out, they have even frozen the manufacture of spares and wondered why adequate spares were not sought to accompany the lot while importing the fleet. The Company’s mechanics also complained of inadequate knowledge of the buses. Commuters are complaining that they are always abandoned in the middle of their journeys.
Meanwhile, a request by the engineering department to have at least 2 persons trained in the country of origin to supervise the management of the fleet is yet to attract any attention even as the number of functional buses dwindles. At the time of filing this report, both the chairman of the company Mr. Osarfo Mensah and his Chief Engineer, Mr .Martin Afram were however out of the country, ostensibly visiting Italy, the country of origin of the buses. The workers claimed that the state owned Metro Mass Transport Company Limited makes about 35million cedis a day from it fleet of 67 in the Accra-Tema metropolis alone.
In all the company has a total of 109 buses in the country made up of 69 Fiat buses and 50 DAF Neoplan buses. 10 of the buses are in the Northern Region, 27 of them in Ashanti while 15 them take care of commuters in Takoradi in the Western Region. Other regions are yet to be allocated.