Lockdown: How a taxi driver tricked the police at checkpoint

Like a confidence trickster, a taxi driver who was caught by lenses of GhanaWeb managed to manoeuvre his way around a COVID-19 police checkpoint at Darkuman Junction.

How did it happen? As per usual in this period of lockdown, police barriers have been mounted at vantage points to maintain order and enforce the president’s directives on safety protocols.

Thus, it is quite usual to meet more than 3 police checkpoints on a short distance road. The presence of the police and military has been to ‘tame’ unwillingly drivers both commercial and private who ply such routes.

In most instances, such drivers are asked to turn back or have their passengers offloaded to ensure that social distancing prevails.

But one taxi driver with car registration number GR 5021-20 tried to pull a fast one on policemen at Darkuman Junction checkpoint and in fact, he got away with it.

The police at the checkpoint asked two of the three passengers in the Kia Morning to get down and pick another car due to the small size of the vehicle, which they obeyed. But as though they had rehearsed and executed, the taxi driver as he was given the green light to go took a different turn to pick up the two passengers who were initially offloaded, on the blind side of the police.

Knowing what he had done, he turned round continuously to confirm if he had been spotted or otherwise as he drove off.

Taxi drivers have been asked to pick either one or two passengers after the outbreak of the Coronavirus.

However, since the imposition of the lockdown, several commercial drivers have criticized the government for not giving them other viable alternatives to live on.

While GhanaWeb was on routine checks at Dome-Kwabenya, some of these drivers in question complained bitterly about the unfair treatment meted out to them by some police/military taskforce enforcing the lockdown.