Ghanaians have a culture of using vehicles for a long time – Supt. Alexander Obeng

The Head of Education, Research and Training at the MTTD of the Ghana Police Service, Superintendent Alexander Obeng has expressed his dissatisfaction about the ‘culture’ of Ghanaian vehicle owners and their use of vehicles till they become absolutely faulty and rickety.

In an interview with GhanaWeb on July 17, 2020, Supt. Obeng added that the use of ‘unfit’ vehicles and poor vehicle maintenance culture is one of the leading causes of road accidents in the country.

“In Ghana we have a culture of using vehicles for a long time, and we also use vehicles as economic tools, and as a means of employment, and people who depend on it for their livelihood. And also, as a result of indiscipline among other reasons, like maintaining their vehicles and ensuring that they are safer,” he stated.

He also added that ideally, vehicles that are fit to be on roads are issued road-worthy stickers. But some vehicle users ‘cheat’ the system to have access to the road-worthy stickers without going through examination at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority.

“So if you look on our roads, you will observe that you see some vehicles that are embossed with appropriate road-worthy sticker, while some also have fake road-worthy sticker. We also have vehicles that have genuine roadworthy sticker, but upon arrest, you do interrogation and you find out that, some also are carrying genuine roadworthy sticker, but the owners may not send the vehicles to DVLA vehicle examiner or the examination center before those genuine stickers were issued to them,” he said.

He, however, concluded that the operation of vehicles with fake road-worthy stickers are ceased until they go through the right procedures to get genuine stickers.

“Those ones that do not have genuine stickers but fake are impounded and prohibited till they go for examination and pass the examination at the DVLA before they are re-issued a road-worthy sticker,” he concluded.