How we enforce our bans

By Kofi Akordor
Last week, the Ministry of Transport announced, as a short-term measure, that a task force would be deployed on the roads to impound vehicles that were originally designed for carrying cargo but have found themselves as passenger vehicles. The ministry said as a long-term solution, it had started the process of sponsoring a legislation which would place a total ban on the conversion of cargo vehicles into contraptions for human beings.
Under normal circumstances, this piece of news should have sent a glow into the hearts of many Ghanaians for very good reasons. For those who may not remember, there was once a breed of vehicles plying our roads called, Watonkyene. These were vehicles which came into the country originally designed by their manufacturers to carry only three persons – the driver and two others – to carry goods at the back to their destinations.
Through the ingenuity of our welders at Kumasi Suame Magazine and other roadside workshops, these vehicles were converted into passenger carriers. Unfortunately, most of these craftsmen did not bother about the construction and use of requirements specified in the Road Traffic Act (2004), Act 683 and the Road Traffic Regulations (1974) LI 953; that is if they were aware of their existence in the first place, which spelt out how those conversions should be done.
These crudely made conversions did not take into account balance and stability of the vehicles when fixing seats on them. The seats themselves were made of iron and patches of foam and leather. On top of these vehicles had been built special cargo holds adding to their load burden.
It was not surprising that these Watonkyene became mobile coffins anytime they were involved in an accident. The fatality rates were very high because one, they were excessively overloaded and two, the seats were not properly designed for passenger comfort and safety.
Official action to stop these vehicles from plying the roads did not yield much because it did not go beyond verbal condemnations, appeals, sporadic threats and warnings. All noise about banning them from plying the roads was mere hot air. These Watonkyenes remained on the roads for as long as their owners cared and passengers were compelled by circumstances to patronise them.
Thank God, age has caught up with most of them so they are very rare, especially on the major highways. But it will not be a surprise to see them in full business in the rural areas where passengers have no choice but to join any available thing on wheels.
There are many other vehicles which came into the country as cargo vehicles but which found their way on the roads as passenger vehicles. A lot of the commercial buses including the infamous Benz 207 were not originally designed for passenger use. How they got licensed and were given roadworthiness certificates as passenger vehicles by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) is still a mystery.
Incidentally, the DVLA and the Motor Transport and Traffic Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service — two major institutions that played no mean role in keeping these dangerous vehicles — are also part of the task force, and Mrs Dzifa Attivor, the Deputy Minister of Transport, announced that they would carry out the operation of removing the vehicles from the roads. Straightaway, we are in the danger of failing in this serious mission.
This is in addition to the fact that we have failed in similar missions in the past. Apart from the story of Watonkyene, we have not been able to enforce the ban on the selling of alcoholic beverages at our lorry parks. The ban only comes alive when we are celebrating our ritualistic road safety campaigns during Easter and Christmas. After that we recoil into our shells to wait for another road safety season or when we are confronted with another ghastly accident in which many people lose their lives.
There was a time when certain category of vehicles was banned from carrying passengers on long distances. The drivers of these vehicles, it was argued, indulged in speeding and so the only solution was to stop them from doing long distances which would stimulate their appetite for speeding.
That argument did not sound logical anyway, since an accident could occur between Tudu in Central Accra and Achimota through recklessness, carelessness or negligence. In any case drivers found a better way of circumventing the ban by segmenting their journey. So in Accra, they will load Nsawam passengers, at Nsawam they will load passengers for Suhum until finally they are in Kumasi. The ban did not work because in the first place as stated earlier, the argument did not sound logical. Two it was not enforceable because you cannot just look at the face of a driver and tell that he had been driving for more than 30 kilometres. Or how do you convince yourself that a passenger who was disembarking from a Nissan Urvan bus at Kejetia Lorry Park in Kumasi joined the vehicle in Accra? It was a laughable experience and that closed the chapter on the ban placed on Nissan Urvan, Toyota Hiace and other mini buses from doing long distances.
Few people will claim they are not aware of the ban on preaching and sale of herbal concoctions on public transport vehicles. Meanwhile, serious-minded passengers will tell you how they have become victims of these noisy preachers and drug peddlers on daily basis on commercial vehicles. And these things happen in Accra every day under the very noses of the law enforcement agencies. We are yet to see a single driver being taken to court for allowing his vehicle to be used as a chapel or chemical shop contrary to law to serve as a deterrent to other prospective offenders.
The transportation sector is where national indiscipline has been given a baptism of acceptance most. See how commercial drivers speed on the shoulders of Accra roads with impunity. We are waiting for some innocent schoolchildren to be mowed down and sent to their premature graves or a minister’s vehicle rammed into before coming back to sermonise about careless driving. Many years after the banning of illegal tinted windows, the windows are becoming darker and darker.
The ban — whether by legislation, regulation or pontification, will be meaningless, in fact useless, unless it is backed with the will to enforce it. For now, we can just take consolation in the fact that this is a new one coming from a new team and hope things will be better.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com