Road Accidents On the Increase

In just the seven days of last week, 65 persons were variously injured in six major motor accidents that occurred on the Konongo-Odumase to Juaso stretch of the Kumasi-Accra Highway.

Heavy duty trucks, popularly called articulators, have been blamed for causing all the accidents, many of them in the night.

The terrifying picture has occasioned the Asante Akyem South district director of Health Services, Dr. Kwasi Yeboah Awudzi, to vehemently protest the continued movement of articulated trucks on the highways in the night.

In an interview he granted Chronicle at Juaso Government Hospital where he also works, Dr. Awudzi said last week's accidents were not an exceptional case.

"Almost every week, the hospital receives many accident victims here at the hospital." Earlier this month, a Cosmos bus, registered as AS 3379 Q and loaded with passengers ran into a wrongly parked timber truck, killing some of them and injuring others, the medic cited as an example.

The same week three accidents occurred at Konongo-Odumasi involving an articulated truck with registration number AS 1491 Q which ran into a house and killed a number of people.

Two other articulated trucks collided and blocked the Kumasi-Accra road at Odumasi one night. He attributed most of the accidents in the district to the heavy duty trucks and reckless over-taking on the part of drivers.

The health director lamented that the Juaso hospital was inadequately resourced to cater for the accident victims who stream there on a daily basis.

While calling for measures to abate the spate of accidents, he appealed to the Ministry of Health to equip it with an ambulance, x-ray equipment and other necessities to cope with its challenges.

Dr. Awudzi called for the supply of ambulances to other major hospitals on the highways throughout the country.

He appealed to the government and the Minister for Roads and Transport to ban heavy-duty trucks which move during the night.

He suggested that all heavy-duty trucks should stop moving by 6:00 pm as they once, were enjoined to do in order to eliminate accidents on the roads.