Kumasi Transport Unions Warn Kojo Bonsu Over Use Of Soldiers To Intimidate And Terrorise

Transport operators in Kumasi have raised eye brows about the Kumasi Mayor Kojo Bonsu's penchant for the use of armed military personnel to brutalize people in the metropolis who dare insist on their right to earn a living.

The operators who have been victims of a supposed decongestion in the Central Business District suspect that the KMA Mayor has been compromised to take the action to favor a certain Kwame Boampong who has created a private lorry terminal at Suame.

Coming together from the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), Progressive Transport Owners Association (PROTOA) and Co-Operative, the aggrieved transport owners warned the Kumasi Mayor to stop what they described as a targeted decongestion of transport operators or they will embark on a sit down strike to be followed by a massive demonstration.

Addressing a press conference in Kumasi on Monday, March 24, 2014, Rev. Ellis Owusu –Ansah the Regional secretary of GPRTU and spokesperson for the Transport Unions further warned that their demonstration that would follow the strike would last for five days within which all their cars would not be allowed to load passengers into or out of Kumasi.

According to Rev. Owusu- Ansah 'we have seen that Hon. Kojo Bonsu has taken the laws into his own hands by using armed soldiers to trample over our civic rights', further asking that 'Is the Mayor above the laws of Ghana'?

The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly began a decongestion of the Kejetia Terminal and its environs asking all affected transport operators to either go the Afia Kobi market or a private terminal at Suame. However these groups have since refused to join any of these two terminals saying the assembly has been unfair to them.

According to them some of the drivers are still operating at the terminal and therefore it would be a loss to them should they go to the Afia Kobi market which is quite far from the CBD. On the other hand, the Suame hilltop highway express terminal, they added, is for an individual and cannot host these nationally recognized transport unions.

However, to prove that they are bent in sending the transport operators to these two terminals, armed military men have been detailed to the GPRTU office at Mbrom, to 'scare both drivers and passengers' who use the place as a terminal.

The aggrieved transport operators do not understand why armed military men would be detailed to prevent drivers from loading on the land in front of the GPRTU office, or attempt to scare passengers when that land does not belong to government but the association.

“If the Metro Mass transit are being allowed to use the space in front of their offices as a loading point, cant the GPRTU and the Co-operative do same by using their own premises as a loading point”. They argued.

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