Minority wants Roads, Transport and Interior ministers summoned over road carnage

The Minority in Parliament wants the ministers for Road and Highways, Transport and the Interior to be summoned over the increasing spate of road accidents.

Minority Spokesperson on Transport, Kwame Governs Agbodza, said the continuous loss of lives on the country’ s roads makes  Parliament’s intervention inevitable.

The Minority also wants a committee set up by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to investigate the cause of road accidents in various parts of the country to be made public.

The call by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) legislators follows the death of about 90 people in two separate road crashes in the Bono East and Central Regions on Friday.

Police have confirmed 55 died in the gory head-on collision between two passenger buses on the Kintampo-Techiman road. 53 others are seriously injured.

Committee

The committee the Minority wants its finding made public was set by the President in 2018 following the deadly crash that killed Ghanaian artiste, Priscilla Opoku-Kwarteng popularly known as Ebony Reigns.

The committee made up of the Minister for the Interior, the Minister of Roads and Highways and the Minister of Transport.

The report has been neither its recommendations nor implementation is obvious.finalised but

 “We’ll force these three ministers to appear before parliament and actually present to parliament, the content of the report they presented to the President and make it public to improve road safety in this country.

“None of the things we see so far gives anybody any inclination as to what the [report] is about. I believe Parliament will do a better job by forcing these Ministers to come to parliament and give us an idea on what they did.  So we can all scrutinize and find out if it fits for purpose or whether we should do more,” the Minority spokesperson told Citi FM on Friday.

Gory accidents

Kintampo Divisional Police Commander, ACP Joseph Antwi Gyawu, told Joy News Bono East Region Correspondent, Anas Sabbit that 35 of the deceased could not be identified.

He said the fatal accident happened around 2 am on Friday at a town called Ampoma in the Bono East Region.

Preliminary investigations reveal the two buses, one with registration number GT 5694 18 and the other GT 3916 17 both had a total of 108 passengers on board.

The survivors have been sent to various health facilities where they are receiving treatment.

Ekumfi tragedy

Myjoyonline has learnt that more than 30 people are feared dead in another fatal accident which occurred at Ekumfi Abor on the Winneba-Cape Coast Highway in the Ekumfi District of the Central Region.

The accident involved a Yutong bus which was travelling from Takoradi to Accra and a Metro Mass Transit bus heading towards Cape coast, Graphiconline reported.

According to an eyewitness, the Yutong bus was trying to overtake another vehicle in the wet morning when the accident occurred. Body parts littered the scene just as blood ran everywhere.

The injured have been rushed to the Winneba Trauma Hospital & the Mankessim Catholic hospital while the bodies of the deceased have been deposited at the morgue of the same hospitals.

The Police and the Fire Service were at the scene to rescue victims still trapped in the wreck. They are also directing traffic which built up on the main road as a result of the accident.

Although Ghana’s roads are considered one of the safest on the continent, the absence of dual-carriage roads leading to major towns and cities has been cited as contributing factor to crashes, a lot of them resulting in fatalities. 

A number of the cases recorded are also due to carelessness on the part of drivers while many others are caused by mechanical faults.

Estimates show that Ghana loses over 230 million dollars yearly due to road accidents. The loss correlates to 1.7% of the country's Gross Domestic Product.

The NRSC announced in 2010 that there were 19 fatalities per 10,000 vehicles in Ghana. Statistics showed that 43% of the fatalities involved pedestrians and 53% involved occupants of vehicles. And 23% of all pedestrian fatalities involved children below the age of 16 years.

The major cause of road accidents in Ghana is due to excessive speeding. This accounts for 60% of car crashes in the country.