Minister Dismisses Allegations Over Mass Transport

Roads and Transport Minister, Dr. Richard Anane on Thursday dismissed recent media reports that activities of the Metro Mass Transit (MMT) Company Limited were gradually grounding to a halt due to the breakdown of 80 of the vehicles and said the MMT instead had made some modest achievements.

Taking his turn at the weekly meet the press briefing in Accra, Dr. Anane said the MMT made an excess income over expenditure of ?1.36bn from its operations in the four cities, Accra/Tema, Takoradi/Sekondi, Kumasi and Tamale as at the end of August.

He said as at today the number of broken down buses was 36 out of the 183 in all four centers and not 80 as reported.

The government, in conjunction with the Social Security and National Insurance Trust, and the National Investment Bank, State Insurance Company and the Prudential Bank incorporated the MMT to provide mass transport services in the country.

The services started in the Accra -Tema metropolis in October 2002 with the supply of an initial 17 used Iveco Fiat buses, which were donated by the Italian government.

But weeks after the MMT became fully operational and began extending its services to Kumasi, Takoradi/Sekondi and Tamale, the initial media report to emerge was that 50 of the buses were grounded. The write up, which followed was that, the breakdown of the buses was due to lack of routine maintenance and non-availability of mechanics.

The reports further went on to say that there were not qualify mechanics in the country to work on the old automatic buses, and that workers of the MMT had been rendered redundant and were engaged in playing draught, lotto, discussing football etc, whiles 300 drivers and conductors had abandoned their post due to the poor conditions of service.

The latest report had it that 30 more of the buses had been grounded due to similar problems.

But Dr. Anane said there was no spare parts shortage but rather that majority of the buses have transmission problems (automatic gear-box), which had to do mainly with the electronic system.

He, however, stated that arrangements had been made for technical assistance from Italy to rectify the problem.

The minister further said the government was currently engaged in negotiation with the Dutch government under ORET funding for the supply of 250 Intra-city buses and that the Dutch authorities were expected to approve the release of the first batch of 100 buses this week.

In addition government was in contact with the Chinese counterpart for the supply of 250 fully assembled buses to beef up the operations of the MMT.

Currently, he said the patronage of the buses stood at 1.5 million a month.

On other issues he said construction works on the major road network in the country both local and international were progressing.