I sat beside a driver who was arrested
for committing a road traffic irregularity along the George Bush Highway
between the Lapaz -Achimota section of the road recently. The driver
was apprehended for committing a road offence and was forced by some
members of the Achimota Motor Task Force to drive the vehicle to the
Achimota New Station and paid a fine of Gh 100 cedis having pleaded for
leniency.
I am told the real amount he should
have paid was GH 200 cedis for a single offence.When I inquired where
such monies are channeled I was told they are forwarded to the Accra
Metropolitan Assembly.It would interest you to know that hundreds of
drivers are fined such amounts daily implying that revenue in huge
monetary terms are obtained by the task force daily.
The
question we should ask is that if such sums of money are to be used in
building and constructing for example the inner roads in the catchment
areas where such offences are committed on hourly basis the whole city
would have been a very beautiful place by now.
This
is an instance in our part of the world where we are battling with high
costs of living where it takes commercial drivers several trips to
raise such sums of money.Would it be wrong to term it legal means of
making unusual extortion? If I am wrong the question that arises here is
that in advanced countries like in the United Kingdom are drivers fined
high amounts as fines for breaking traffic offences for the first time?
The
change we Ghanaians have all sought for is now here but during the
first hundred days this new government spends in office, I believe the
views of the Ghanaian folks(people from all walks of life especially
citizens at the grassroots) must be properly and carefully sought for,
if possible, by using well detailed and well designed questionnaires
which are devoid of leading questions so the leadership of our country
would get the appropriate panorama of what factors keep on causing the
unusually high costs of living in Ghana especially as far as living in
the urban towns and cities are concerned.
The
onus lies on all those in power who were elected or appointed to decide
to see things from the right perspective so that our upcoming
governments would not grow unpopular within four years of their being
ushered into office simply because of their inability to curb the
alarming rising costs of living in the country.
Before
I end this letter I wish to state that I believe that through ardent
prayers, "tomorrow by this time" there could be a mind blowing
prosperity in our land.But let us assume that there is such sudden
prosperity in our land in terms of bumper harvests in all farm lands in
Ghana and the high costs of transportation remain the same. The impact
of the "sudden prosperity" in our land would mean nothing because
instead of market women transporting for instance five big barrels of
palm oil from a particular village into one of the main cities in Ghana
on a particular day, the " sudden prosperity" would rather imply that
the market women incur financial expenses since this time if they should
transport ten or twenty barrels of palm oil into the same cities they
would incur twice or more on costs of transportation.
Are
we moving forward then in our attempts to bring a blessing upon our
posterity?It is about time we work upon every sector of our economy to
ensure that citizens have enough and something to save down for their
future or for the upcoming generation.They then would say we left them a
sound and a great legacy some time to come.
Yours faithfully,
Signed
Ebenezer K N Baiden- Amissah
P O Box LG 1254,Legon, Accra
Telephone: +233245310380/+233201257024
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