SANITY RETURNS TO STREETS OF TWIN-CITY (PAGE 23, JAN 27, 2011)

Streets in the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolis have seen less congestion after a private company introduced the park and pay system in the city.
The system situation has eliminated the situation where visitors to the metropolis, shoppers and customers, as well as staff of corporate bodies with vehicles parked on the both sides of the streets.
At present, all the streets in the central business district have been marked and vehicle owners who park on these streets have to pay GH¢0.50p every hour.
According to the Chief Executive of Gold Street Real Estate, Mr Kakraba Amppeh, the focus and the agreement reached with the metropolitan assembly and sub-metros was to create the consciousness that would make vehicle owners park in an acceptable manner.
At the moment, Mr Amppeh said young men and women had been employed to sell tickets to people who parked at the designated places in the metropolis while wrongly parked vehicles were usually clamped.
The company, he said, was researching and assessing the needs of companies and their employees who operate from the central business district and had designed special stickers for them.
“With that, the vehicle owner is at liberty to purchase a sticker for a month, two months, quarterly, half-a-year or a whole year to save the vehicle owners the problems of paying 50p every hour,” he said.
Mr Kakraba said there were also designated places in the metropolis where vehicles of shop owners, white-colour workers and other people with businesses in the CBD could park the whole day.
He said the situation in the metropolis if not managed on time could degenerate into more chaotic congestion which would not only create slow movement but also reduce productivity.
He said while moves were being made to ensure that there are expansion in social infrastructure, there was the need to manage the current space until the perfect environment was created.
“At the moment, the streets within the railways quarters are been studied for the creation of one way, while the other is marked for parking,” he said.
Asked if there are any difficulties, he said the only problem had to do with co-operation by members of the general public and added, “That was the initial problem but the public have come to understand and appreciate the need to park-and-ride or park well at a fee”.
He appealed to members of the general public to demand their ticket after parking and paying, saying “the vehicle owners should note that ticket lasts for just an hour and they will be charged extra after another hour”.
He, however, cautioned corporate bodies that if they had paid for a month, quarterly and yearly, then they had the exclusive right to designated places as some companies had posted notice of no parking in front of their offices.
He also said the sticker did not guarantee indiscriminate parking and “if your car is parked at unapproved place, it would be clamped”.
He said even though the focus was not on money, it was important to let vehicle owners also pay for the use of the designated places to ensure that the assembly generated more revenue for development projects.