AS if selling gas to vehicles in a hazardous manner in the Twin-City is not dangerous enough, most owners of gas stations appear not to care about the activities of taxi drivers within their premises.
Apart from blocking the streets with long queues of vehicles wanting to buy gas meant for domestic use, these taxi drivers transfer the gas from one vehicle to another, using plastic pipes, in the yard where the gas is sold, thereby putting the lives of the public at risk.
Some of the sales points where these activities take place are the gas stations on the Sekondi/Takoradi main road, the gas station near the Western Regional Co-ordinating Council (RCC) and the one near the Military Base at Apremdo.
When the Daily Graphic visited one of the stations, taxi drivers were seen transferring gas from one vehicle to another, in the full glare of the operators of that station, without any condemnation from them.
According to some of the drivers, should there be any fire outbreak, it would be the taxis that would catch fire, not the station.
As typical of the Ghanaian, the various agencies responsible for the enforcement of the law are waiting until disaster strikes for a committee to be set up to investigate it.
The indiscriminate siting of LPG stations in the Sekondi/Takoradi metropolis and their mode of operation are not the best.
Some residents called on the government to ensure that vehicles which came into the country designed to use petrol were not converted to use gas.
They also argued that those gas stations which wanted to sell the product to taxi drivers should have separate sales points for taxis and other commercial vehicles.
The use of gas was intensified in 1990s and the product was heavily subsidised by the government in its bid to curtail the rate of deforestation and promote healthier cooking options.
But now LPG has become the main fuel for commercial vehicles.
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