Customs personnel to ensure prohibited foreign vehicles do not enter the country

Mr. John Opoku, Sogakope District Police Commander, has called on personnel of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, to stop prohibited foreign vehicles from entering the country because of the dangers they posed on the highways.

Mr. Opoku made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency following the interception of two extra-long and large Nigerian registered articulated trucks at Sogakope on their way to Accra on Friday.

He said the trucks, with registration numbers XR-188-LSR and XT-117-KSF, have their lengths and widths expanded to 45 feet and 11 feet respectively instead of the normal 40 feet and eight feet.

Mr. Opoku said this made the trucks to veer into the opposite lanes thus posing danger to vehicles travelling from the opposite direction and those wanting to overtake them.

He therefore commended the South Tongu District Road Safety Task Force for impounding the two trucks saying “road safety should be the concern of all agencies.”

Mr. Moses Kobla Aloryi, Chairman of the Task Force, said while towing an accident vehicle from Akatsi on Friday, the Taskforce chanced upon one of the articulated trucks which had caused 20 cars to be moving at a snail’s pace.

He said the second articulated truck was also intercepted at the Sogakope Customs barrier.

Mr. Aloryi, also the Head of the Road Safety Management Services Limited, said the articulated trucks were designed to move cargo within Nigeria’s industrial areas and not on highways hence the need to intercept them.

Kwame Bimoba, a Ghanaian truck driver, told the GNA that he was forced to drive behind one of such trucks from Tema to Kasseh-Ada before he could overtake it.

Musa Suleimana and Ali Awolo, drivers in charge of the impounded trucks, admitted the trucks’ abnormal features and the difficulties they posed to other drivers on the road.

They said they had been to Ghana on several occasions with the trucks.

They said the side mirrors of the trucks had to be elongated to capture objects behind because the original mirrors had their views blocked by the body of the trucks.**