Driver who caused train accident should have been jailed 10 years – Dan Kwaku Yeboah argues

Ace sports journalist, Dan Kwaku Yeboah, has offered a dissenting view to the ruling by the Juapong Circuit Court on the matter of the driver who parked his Hyundai truck on the Tema-Mpakadan railway that resulted in the accident involving one of the government’s newly imported trains.

On Friday, April 19, 2024, the court ruled that Abel Dzidotor, the driver, be imprisoned for six months with hard labour for unlawful damage.

He was also found guilty of careless and inconsiderate driving as well as unauthorized stopping.

He was fined GH₵1,200 and GH₵240 respectively for those crimes.

Reacting to the ruling on Okay FM, Kwaku Yeboah, who had earlier condemned the actions of the driver, protested the decision by the court, arguing that the judge was lenient.

In his view, Abel Dzidotor committed multiple crimes and should have at least served ten years in jail for his crimes.

Kwaku Yeboah believes that the judgement was a slap on the wrist and will not deter others from engaging in actions that lead to the destruction of state properties.

“My initial reaction to the ruling was that Ghana is never going to function well. There are people in this country who have been jailed for two years for just stealing coconut but someone who deliberately parked his car on a railway was jailed for six months. What kind of human beings are we?

“By parking his train there, wasn’t he causing financial loss to the state? Why couldn’t we borrow that law and jail him for ten years? He did that deliberately so he should have been jailed for ten years," he argued.

EK/AE