Opinions

News

Sports

Business

Entertainment

GhanaWeb TV

Africa

Country

Whose responsibility is the Road Safety in Ghana? Is it Dr Anane?

Fri, 2 Sep 2005 Source: Bolus, Mercy Adede

Ghana 's road safety is questionable. Statistics shows that our road safety is nothing to boost of. It is only now that that DVLA is seriously being effective and operatiional. Most of our Ghanaian drivers particularly lorry drivers have no formal education and one wonders how they pass their driving test anyway? Who in the DVLA okay these drivers to drive on our roads?

No wonder lives are at risk because of they are not respected by some of these drivers. Ghanaians rely on trotro and taxis yet safety in the hands of these people is questionable. These guys call themselves professional drivers but with any proper driving test who on earth would put their lives at risk?

Our infrastucture is slowly improving with foreign investors; heavily pumping money into the system yet road safety has barely been addressed. Tema motorway, Tetteh Quarshie roundabout and other major roundabouts that seriously need traffic lights to man the traffic from all corners.

In Britain, major roundabout like the Tolworth roundabout in Surrey and Others have about 24 set of traffic lights per roundabout.

Ghana has not sorted it road safety like the rest of the world. France hardly had any round abouts in the 1980's but currently they have seen the benefits it brings and have developed their roundabout effectively with little gardens etc inside the round abouts and finishing them with traffic lights. We in Ghana had roundabouts in the 1960's yet we are still where we started from.

Don't we reflect on our achievement to enable us to move with development? Which department is responsible for looking into the future about our roundabouts and road developments? It rather saddens me that Government after Governments have come but none so far have even thought of installing traffic light within major roundabouts. Do we have a national speed limit so that passengers could report speeding drivers who do not comply to the national speed limit?

The national speed limit sign should be posted everywhere as our drivers speed within their own speed limit. If we don't not speak out and get the Minister responsible to act now, there would be more casualties like the death of our top doctors.

Ghana is not ashamed of its road safety statistics yet we are busy trying to get tourism on the cards. Have we forgotten that the tourists would like to return home safely but not in coffins. The earlier the department of Transport sort its house effectively with everyone on board the sooner the tourists would be coming to Ghana. I cannot boost about our road safety. It is a shame. I'm waiting for answers to this article and by this I mean real action. With time scales and a Guntt chart. I hate lip services as it still keep us in the 1900.



Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.

Columnist: Bolus, Mercy Adede