Member of Parliament for Awutu-Senya South, George Nenyi Kojo Andah is advocating for the police to control speed and drunk-driving on our roads.
According to him, the police must intensify this control on the rural highways to stem the high incidence of traffic fatalities and injuries on the nation’s roads.
He commended the efforts of government for the One District, One Ambulance and the operationalisation of the 112 emergency toll free number as it would help improve the country’s emergency response capacity especially to road crashes.
Mr. Andah noted that the ban on importation of accident and overage vehicles into the country, will ensure quality vehicles are on the roads to reduce the incidents of road carnage.
In a statement on the floor of the House, he emphasized that in almost all countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America road traffic crashes have become one of the leading causes of death in older children and economically active adults between the ages of thirty (30) and forty-nine (49) years.
“Mr. Speaker road carnage claimed two hundred and twenty-two (222) lives in Ghana in January 2020 alone. This is according to provisional data on road accidents from the Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service for the sixteen regions.
The above statistics show an average of seven deaths daily for the first month of 2020 from accidents mainly attributed to reckless driving, as it represent ten percent increase compared to the same period last year, which recorded 201 deaths.
“Ghana is not only losing human capital to accident-related deaths, but productive lives are being rendered disabled due to serious injuries”, he lamented.
He further emphasized that persons affected mostly from the data were productive males aged above 18 years and the Central Region leads the pack with 48 deaths in 58 crashes followed by the Ashanti Region with 23 deaths in 275 recorded cases.
The total number of vehicles involved in also up from one thousand six hundred and sixty-four (1,664) to one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine (1,998) with private vehicles mostly involved and commercial vehicles captured under the report comprise of buses, minibus, trucks taxi and others.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com