By Otchere Darko

[*Readers who are not sure about this writer and get confused about his name and identity may please read the information placed at the bottom of this article.]



Re: 18 dead in fatal accident on Accra-Aflao road; [Ghanaweb General News of Tuesday, 20 September 2011; Source: citifmonline]



My heart tumbles every time I read about these fatal road accidents. Virtually no week passes without motor accidents claiming lives in Ghana, a country that has only a minute fraction of the volumes of vehicular traffic that take place in countries like USA, Japan, UK, Germany, etc. Why should this be so? Every Ghanaian knows the causes of these road accidents..... bad drivers; bad used vehicles and bad used motor accessories; bad roads; bad road transport over-seers; lack of transportation alternatives; etc. Many Ghanaians, including myself, have in the past written to suggest various solutions. In this particular article, I am limiting my suggestions to four major areas..... that is, solving the problems of: (1) bad vehicles and bad spare parts; (2) bad road construction and maintenance; (3) inefficient motor transport and traffic over-seeing; and (4) the absence of alternative means of transportation in Ghana.



The Government must accept that one major reason why there are too many road accidents in Ghana is because about 90% of the vehicular traffic on our roads is made up of bad used vehicles that have been imported into, and “recycled” for use in this country. Added to this is the fact that about the same percentage of vehicle repairers in Ghana use scrapped second-hand spare parts and motor accessories and components to repair vehicles brought to them for repairs. It is clear that where about 90% of vehicles plying on the roads of a country are bad imported used vehicles that have been “recycled” for domestic use and which are also always repaired with imported scrapped vehicle parts and accessories, what can naturally come out of the two “bad things” are frequent vehicular failures that lead to fatal accidents. The government must understand that the lives of Ghanaians lost in motor traffic accidents are more valuable than the money that would be used to import newer and better vehicles, or the duty that the government derives from the importation of bad used vehicles and scrapped used motor spare-parts. *I have said it before, and I am saying it again that the Government should ban the importation of used vehicles that are more than ten years old in the case of commercial vehicles, and those that are five years old in the case of cars. *The Government must also ban the importation and use of all scrapped vehicle spare parts from other countries. Good governments take right decisions, even where such decisions are unpopular.



The task of building and maintaining roads in a country is one of the most expensive infrastructural works that sap up the resources of the government of any nation, but most especially those of third-world nations. In situations where governments are finding it difficult to find the financial resources to cope with the challenges posed by road construction and maintenance, good roads become the casualty of such scarcity of resources. Governments of third-world countries, including the Government of Ghana, must lessen this problem by allowing private road construction companies to construct, maintain and run some commercially important roads with hundred percent private capital. Road construction and maintenance can be made to become economically viable and commercially profitable enough to attract private investment and capital. *If the Government of Ghana cannot provide and maintain roads to standards where they can be safe for use, then it must invite private road construction companies to take over some of our roads and operate them on commercial basis.



If the MTTU section of Ghana police was incorruptible and efficient, many road accidents could be prevented. However, I do not think that our MTTU will change in the foreseeable future. *Accordingly, my solution to the contribution of MTTU towards motor traffic accidents is for the Government to privatise this specialised unit of Ghana police. I believe that the MTTU would become an efficient organisation if it is privately owned. In the suggested privatisation of MTTU, I would recommend that the Government should try to involve private insurance companies that deal with motor vehicle insurance, and possibly encourage them to become the new owners of MTTU. If MTTU was privately owned and its owners were the same insurance companies that insured vehicles in Ghana, accidents on our roads would drastically be reduced because those new MTTU police officers would do their work better, once they know they are working for profit-making companies, and would stop collecting bribes from offending drivers.



The absence of better transport alternatives in Ghana creates excessive dependence on road transport, which in its turn acts as a pressurising contributory factor towards road traffic accidents. If travellers could have alternative means of transportation, such as railway networks linking the regional capitals, or domestic airports that link some of our major cities; with their corresponding domestic air services, or reliable waterways; with modern motorable boats and ships that sail on our Volta lake and along our coastline, many of such travellers would be less inclined to travel by road. Railway construction is obviously expensive and this calls for either the pooling together of public resources of two or more countries in West Africa, or the creation of joint public-private entrepreneurial ventures. *Ghana must try and team up with some of the countries surrounding us to create inter-regional railway lines that will be economically viable to construct and operate, once they are done on sub-regional basis rather than on national basis. For example, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mali could come together to raise the needed capital to construct a trans-West African railway line to connect, for example, Timbuktu and Bamako in Mali to Bobo Dioulasso and Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, and then to Tamale, Kumasi and Accra or Takoradi in Ghana, etc. That would be a long-term project, but it would certainly help in the long run to address the excessive use and abuse of our roads by irresponsible and money-crazy drivers. *Development and operation of new domestic airports and airlines are very expensive, but they could be done through private capital, without the need for the Government to resort to borrowing, provided the Government encouraged them. *Similarly, water transportation through the Volta Lake and along Ghana’s coastline could be encouraged, developed and improved to provide alternative means of travelling for people and for transporting cargo from the Northern regions to Ashanti, Eastern and Volta regions of Ghana, as well as from one coastal town to another along the coastline of Ghana. All these alternatives would relieve the pressure on road transportation and help to bring road accidents down.



Let the Government act now to put a stop to the on-going destruction of Ghanaian lives through preventable roads accidents. No money is worth the loss of a human life.



Source: Otchere Darko; [Personal Political Views].



*About the Author:



[This appendage is for the information of only readers who get confused about this particular writer because of the name he uses, and who therefore need to know more about him or about the name he uses. Ignore this appendage, if you are not one of such readers. *This writer is just one of hundreds, and possibly thousands of Ghanaians who use the name “Otchere Darko”, either on its own, or in combination with other names. Some users spell this same name as “Okyere Darko”, while other users conjoin it with the help of a hyphen to become one single compound name, “Otchere-Darko” or “Okyere-Darko”, depending on which spelling-mode they choose. This writer, who has officially used this ‘simple name’ from his school days in the sixties into the seventies and continues to use it officially to this very day, attended the School of Administration of University of Ghana where he finally left in September 1977, the year that students embarked on the “UNIGOV” demonstration. He has never before, or after September 1977 been a student of the Ghana Law School. Up to the end of 1981, he worked as a senior public servant in, and for one of the mainstream Ministries in Ghana. He is not working for, and has never worked at the Danquah Institute. He is currently also not a member of NPP, or of any other party in Ghana. He is not related to any practising Ghanaian politician who uses this same or other name. *May readers concerned, please, take note of this exhaustive clarification and stop drawing wrong conclusions that sometimes lead them to attack a wrong person. Thank you for taking note.