Ensuring Public Safety In Ghana 

NEWS COMMENTARY ON ENSURING PUBLIC SAFETY IN GHANA 

Many Ghanaians are yet to come to terms with the gory accident that killed more than 60 people at Kintampo. Apart from exposing our poor maintenance culture, the accident also blew the lid on the lack of preparedness on the part of the nation for emergencies. Many are of the view that the accident could have been avoided, if, as a nation we have that culture of enforcing our rules and regulations and if citizens are law abiding. One, there is a law against over loading, there is also a law that ensures that functional vehicles are road worthy and also there are laws that demand that animals are confined and not left to roam about. But, listening to the narrative, it appeared that none of these laws were followed. We understand that the Metro Mass bus was overloaded, the vehicle allegedly developed some fault yet the driver continued driving and also that there was a cow crossing the road at that time which the driver attempted swerving hence, bumping into the cargo truck.  Evidence abound that the greater percentage of road accidents are caused by human error.

President Mahama was right to suggest that poor maintenance of vehicles is a major cause of road carnage in Ghana. At this time, we need to question why and how some vehicles which ply our roads manage to acquire road worthy certificates. In fact, one needs not be a rocket scientist to know that some vehicles have lost their right to be on the road, such can only be described as scraps. It beats imagination, why the police and the national road safety commission officials allow these scraps to be on the road, carrying passengers on daily basis. Enforcement is indeed a major challenge for our nation. It is said that, our problem as a nation is not the absence of good laws but rather the courage and the determination to enforce the laws. 

There is no doubt that the National  Road Safety Commission has been busy the whole year round educating vehicle users on how to drive safely together with the police service who are seen checking vehicle users at vantage points. However due to the bitter experiences we have gained on our roads the authorities must take steps to improve on methods of checking vehicles on our roads. The Ministry of Transport in conjunction with the National Road Safety Commission and the Ghana police service must intensify their education for road users in the cities and rural areas where road offences such as overloading and reckless speeding and overtaking are rampant. We must not limit ourselves to only the road sector, same attention must be extended to air and lake transport too. Quite recently, one of our ferries run by the Volta Lake Transport carrying more than 500 people from Makango to Yeji nearly sank in the Volta Lake with all the people on board. The ferry was said to be in use without adequate regular servicing.

Public safety should be the concern of all. We for some time now, we have been inundated with fire outbreaks which have claimed a number of lives and destroying property worth thousands if not millions of Ghana cedis. In view of the need to ensure the safety of the people, we ought to move a step further by dealing with ways of encountering all possible life threatening incidents in the country. To achieve this, we must set up a Public Safety Office within the presidency. Together with the ministry of transport, the police service, NADMO and other relevant agencies, the new office could study ways of reducing accidents to the barest minimum. The Public Safety Office must move fast enough to remove all rickety vehicles on our roads in both the cities and the rural areas. All government commercial vehicles must all be made to adhere to the rules governing private commercial vehicles by getting them insured against accidents. The office must take a hard look at our government offices and our markets to ensure that they are provided with fire safety facilities. The recent murders committed by cutlass wielding young men on farms in parts of the country are all issues that can be studied by the new office to ensure that the causes of those crimes are dealt with. Because such an office is required to be proactive it must be given enough support to be able to work around the clock to ensure the safety of all the people in cities and rural areas of the country.

BY: ALHAJI ALHASSAN ABDULAI, CEO OF EANFOWORLD FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.