Commercial drivers still struggling with new GH¢

Commercial (trotro) drivers are still struggling to get their arithmetic right, a month after the country started the process of rolling off the old currency for the new Ghana cedis.

The Bank of Ghana introduced the new Ghana cedis early last month. The essence of the re-denomination of the currency, officials explained, was to make transaction of business easy for everyone.

The new currency would be used alongside the old ones till the end of the year when the old ones will be discontinued. Anticipating the likely difficulties that the exercise would bring to the system, the central bank and other agencies embarked on a series of campaigns to sensitize the public about the different denominations, and how to differentiate them in order to ensure the smooth running of their business.

But one month into the usage of the new notes and coins, sections of the business community and individuals are still not clear about the proper conversion.

Observations by the dailyEXPRESS over the past two weeks has revealed that most commercial drivers and their mates are still not in tune with the new currency, especially when it comes to the conversion from the old currency to the new one. The hardest hit is the bus conductors, unfortunately, are deficient when it comes to the arithmetic associated with the changes involved.

Monitoring and observation of vehicles plying the Tema/Accra, Dansoman/Circle and Teshie/Nungua routes exposed the difficulties most of the conductors face when converting from the old to the new currency. And this has put them in a series of confrontational situations with passengers.

Because of the difficulty in converting, they ended up either giving passengers more than what they should get or undercut. During our rounds we stumbled upon a nasty incident during which a passenger threatened to beat up a conductor he accused of deliberately trying to cheat him.

The conductor got confused after the passenger gave him a GH¢5 (¢50,000) to pay his fare which was 55Gp. The verbal onslaught that ensued continued with the others passengers joining in the melee until the driver intervened.

In another incident witnessed at the Accra Neoplan station, the bus conductor told passengers boarding his vehicle that those holding any denomination higher than the GHC¢1 (¢10,000) should not get on board.

This resulted in a confrontation, compelling some of the passengers to report him to the GPRTU official present. He however could not help as the conductor explained that he cannot go looking for change when he’s presented with GH¢10 (¢10,000) & GH¢20 (¢20,000) for fares less than 80Gp (¢8,000).

In yet another incident, a passenger on board a Dansoman Sakaman bound trotro was asked to get down in the middle of the journey because the conductor did not have a change for his GH¢5 (¢50,000).