Stakeholders in the transport industry in the Western Region have called for the establishment of a regulatory body to take a second look at the over-liberalisation of the transport industry in the country.
The Western Regional Commander of the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service, Mr George Adusa-Poku, described the current over-liberalised system as chaotic.
He said another problem facing the industry was the recklessness on the roads in the region and blamed drivers of commercial vehicles belonging to personnel of the security agencies for the insurgence.
Mr Adusa-Poku said the police, prisons, army and personnel of other security agencies were the owners of most vehicles with offending drivers because “these drivers think they are above the law. They stop and load anywhere and even confront officers on duty with abusive language”.
This, he said, would not help the country’s commercial transport sector or bring about the needed safety on the roads and that if the industry was regulated to determine the number of vehicles that could be on the road at a time, which vehicle could be used as a taxi and where it could ply, it would bring some sanity to the system.
Mr Adusa-Poku said vehicles, especially taxis in the system, were too many and that many of them were not in a good shape or fit to be put on the road.
Besides the regulatory body, the regional MTTU commander stressed the need for passengers to change their attitudes and ensure that they did not patronise vehicles which picked passengers indiscriminately and at unauthorised places.
“It is about time passengers knew that drivers had relegated their safety to the background for the sake of the profit they would make,” he said.
He said when one visited the various terminals in the metropolis and other parts of the region, there were many vehicles waiting for their turn to load, and if passengers made use of the terminals they would not load passengers along the roads.
“If they did not get passengers along the roads, they would be compelled to come back to the station and load but if they get passengers on the street, the drivers would not go to the terminals to await for their turn to load,” he said.
The Western Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP), Alhaji Hamidu Mahama, called for closer collaboration to ensure that sanity prevails on the road.
He said the country could not afford to lose its rich human resources to preventable accidents and that drivers should be mindful of the importance of their activities to the economy.
Other officials from the Ghana Private Road Transport Union and the Road Safety Commission called for a concerted effort to curb the carnage on the roads and the chaotic scenes in the metropolis.
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