Coronavirus: Train trotro drivers to use Aayalolo buses – Dr Abekah-Nkrumah

Following the two-week lockdown declared by president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, some commercial vehicles, popularly known as trotro will be affected economically because of the social distancing policy.

Due to this, a health economist at the University of Ghana, Dr Abekah-Nkrumah has advised government to train these drivers who are willing to work how to drive the country’s Aayalolo buses.

According to him, deploying more Aayalolo buses in Accra will help check the social distancing policy put in place as one of the measures to help prevent the contraction of the pandemic which is fast spreading.

Also, these drivers can be tracked as they are mandated to load from government-designated stations in the region.

In his view, instead of the trotro drivers working, “Let’s flood the cities with these (Aayalolo) buses because we can control them and then the trotro people who want to work can be given these buses to drive with a little bit of training and work with the trotro people so that if they are supposed to load, they are no longer going to load from their station, they are loading from the government designated station and in that case the numbers can reduce,” he said in an interview with CitiTV’s Big Issue Saturday, March 28, 2020.

In the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s televised speech, he noted that there will be no intercity movement of vehicles and aircrafts for private or commercial purposes in various lockdown areas except for vehicles and aircraft providing essential services, as well as those carrying cargo.

He highlighted that “riders of motorbikes are not allowed to carry any additional person and all intra-city passenger vehicles such as trotros and taxis must reduce the number of passengers in order to observe appropriate social distancing and hygiene protocols”.

The new restrictions are part of measures to contain the spread of the virus which has killed 5 out of the 152 confirmed cases so far.