Hold officials accountable for road accidents - Nana Yaw Akwada

Executive Director of Bureau of Public Safety (BPS), Nana Yaw Akwadaa has asked Ghanaians to hold duty bearers accountable in the wake of the increasing spate of road accidents across the country.

At least 771 persons have so far lost their lives to road crashes between January and March this year, according to the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA).

Speaking to Kojo Mensah on The Asaase Breakfast Show, the Executive Director of the BPS, Nana Yaw Akwada, said until the citizenry complements the effort of civil society groups to demand accountability, the situation will remain the same.

“Leaving NGOs and civil societies alone to engage recalcitrant policy makers, policy makers that are not in tune with what is going on the ground and the media, will not yield any results and today that has been proven in the last four years to five years that we are getting very little results for so much we put in,” he said.Question policy makers

Akwada added: “It is time for the citizens to take their lives into their own hands, begin to question policy makers, MPs begin to demand reforms and answers from their DCEs and MCEs begin to question the president at every and any forum they meet the president.”

The BPS boss is unhappy about the level of attention and resources devoted to addressing the menace of road crashes in the country so far.

“Look at the amount of resources and time that we have devoted to COVID-19 and look at how we are looking at road safety.”

Akwada said the country has lost over two thousand lives alone within a spate of one year hence nothing drastic was being done to address the problem.

Radical change

“In the last one year we have over two thousand lives, in the last five years we are talking ten thousand lives and still nothing radical is happening. So if we do not question policy makers they will continue to sleep on their job and renege on their mandate and at the end of the day all of us will suffer,” he said.

“We the ordinary citizens, we are dying on a daily basis in double digits, we are getting incapacitated, our livelihoods are being cut short on a daily basis and we choose to engage in matters that are so remote and so those who are supposed to make the change are living their lives as they have it. We must demand the change we require.”