Is This “Value For Death”?

One of the catchy phrases that gained attention on the political scene in recent years is “value for money” (VFM). The term assesses whether or not an organization has achieved the full benefit from the goods and services within the resources available to it. The term also takes into account the mix of quality, cost, resource use, fitness for purpose, timeliness and convenience to make a good judgment on what constitute VFM. https://www.admin.cam.ac.uk.

This important concept is described in terms of economy – careful use of resources, efficiency- delivering same level of service for less cost and effectiveness - getting a better return for the same amount of expense, time and efforts (ibid). On the basis of this, people suffer justifiably or unjustifiably for causing financial loss to the state.

However, there is something more than VFM - value for life. Life is priceless, precious and valuable. If it is a fact that minds create wealth, then logically it is important to put the highest value on the source of wealth than the wealth itself. A character in Mawuli Adze`s novel The Jewel of Kabibi (2011) once described his daughter as “money on two legs” to express the highest value he placed on her. We live in a society that loves and holds child bearing sacred and those who are not able to annex such blessing perhaps through no fault of theirs are so ridiculed and are painfully soaked in grief their lifespan.

However, care for life in our part of the world is so minute and microscopic. Death especially on the roads is rampant that we don't feel its impact as a nation. The last time ululation hit roof- pinnacles announcing an accident in my village Savietula in the Keta Municipality, we all rushed to catch a glimpse. It was a sad sight of people travelling to Accra but ended their journey sadly in a ditch when the driver of the Sprinter mini bus (GE 4346-09) on which they were travelling lost control of the steering wheel after a burst tyre. The car summersaulted many times and landed upside down. Two passengers instantly died. They were thrown out through the sliding door and crashed their heads on the hot tarmac. According to Joy News one person later died in the hospital while the rest six survived.

“We are lucky only two persons died,” remarked an onlooker. Consternation seized me instantly and I angrily remarked “why so callous, even the loss of one madman in an accident is too huge to quantify.” The middle aged man who gave his name as Agbeko looked into my face in awe, thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled a paper. It was a newsletter of the Akatsi South District Assembly and on its front page a Ghana News Agency (GNA) report headlined “Dzelukope Chief and others died in Accident.” In that report six people were crashed to death at Alesikpe near Dabala Junction. The dead include Torgbui Kporsu III who happened to be the father of a very good secondary school mate Kporsu Patrick. Then he pulled out another paper from a file he was holding and handed it over to me. “18 dead in a fatal accident on Accra Aflao road,” was the headline. It is a story published by ghanaweb.com but culled from cityfmonline.com. He told me he could go on and on proving with series of reports about the huge number of people dying on the road every day.

Carnage on the road is a big drain on the national economy. Accidents rob homes of bread winners, maim many into perpetual deformity making them economically incapacitated. Accidents create many orphans and single parents truncating the smooth education and social progress of children which bleak and blight the future of these precious national assets. And above all it put too much pressure on the limited medical facilities.

We thank God daily for having blessed Ghana with numerous natural resources but oblivious of the truth that it is only a cadre of healthy and living human resources that could help tap these natural endowments. Do we have leaders in Ghana? If really we do, then they must know that road accident in Ghana must be treated as a national emergency because it is now a health problem in an epidemic proportion. Where is the President of Ghana, the Minister of Transport, the Minister of Roads and Highways, the Motor Traffic Unit of the Police Service, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority DVLA and the National Road Safety Commission? They must wake up from their long sleep.

In Ghana, driving means speed and speed means driving- the notion of many drivers. When one covers for example the Accra-Tema motorway within five minutes he or she is the best and brave. When one uses two hours to drive from Accra to Kumasi he is poised to enter the Guinness book of records. Then when one uses some three hours from Accra to Tamale then he or she is on the way of being knighted. These erroneous views rule the world of many drivers.

Most drivers are so much in haste to enter their graves than a little patience of one or two minutes to save themselves and others from avoidable death and also reach their destinations. Why the haste? The worst offenders are the commercial drivers. They scramble and contest among themselves for passengers to meet the targeted sales for the day. This they achieve through senseless speeding expressed in unnecessary overtaking with little or no regards to traffic rules. Even pedestrians on the zebra crossing must yield forcefully to these erring drivers else they lose their lives. In the midst of all these there is a deviant policeman who has a mandate to forcefully enforce the law but extort one Ghana cedi from these traffic urchins and let them go free. The result of this unpatriotic act is the thousands of deaths we record year in year out. In the year 2012, 2,249 people lost their lives on the road with 14,181 people injured some of who may be deformed forever. Then in 2011, 2,330 deaths were recorded and between 2008 and 2012 9,446 deaths as against 55,798 injuries. In 2013, over 1,500 deaths were recorded.

On most Ghanaian roads, symbols especially speed limit signs are rarer than a needle lost in a sand bath and where they exist they are treated with stupendous disdain and impunity by most motorists. This attitude has forced some communities along major roads to put unauthorized rumps to check the lawlessness and save lives. But a responsible driver in the absence of signs must know that he or she must adapt speed to suit local, road and traffic conditions. Having these simple rules in mind makes a driver drive in a way that allows him or her to stop in a dangerous or emergency situation.

Driving is such an important profession which must be handled by people not only with very high intelligent quotient (IQ) but persons with very high emotional quotients (EQ) who are so considerate to other road users, alert and cautious behind the wheels, having in mind that as drivers, they have at their command forces that other road users cannot match (Moe et al, 2010). This is because a little error on the part of the driver could result in life loss in multitudes. It is for this reason driving in most developed democracies is strictly controlled. Nevertheless, in Ghana it is left in the hands of illiterates, school drop outs, drug addicts whose conscience about life essence is so dead.

Driving license in Ghana is so cheap to acquire than the cheapest commodity and that people without an iota of knowledge about driving could own one if they so desire and those who don't hold such desires drive freely without it. The question is do we have a body mandated to issue license and ensure safety on the Ghanaian roads? Of course we have – Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA). Established in 1999 by Act 569 of Ghana`s Parliament the DVLA formerly called Vehicle Examination and Licensing Division (VELD) is charged with the responsibility of ensuring safety on the Ghanaian roads. The act permits Ghanaians at age 18 and older a three months driving course which ends with a written exam with 70 percent score or more as pass mark. The second phase of the licensing process takes the prospective driver through a test which involves identification and explanation of several road signs. A successful progress in the second phase offers the chance to the candidate to take a practical test where a DVLA instructor observes the persons driving. An error free test-drive qualifies the driver to a cover note which is returned for the driver`s license on a said date, (http://en.wikipedia.org).

How many Ghanaians use this method to acquire their driving license? “Fair is foul and foul is fair,” says the three witches in Shakespeare`s Macberth when the they temporarily overturned the course of destiny of two generals in King Duncan`s army. At the DVLA even the stoic are forced to fight against their righteousness and follow the wrong path in acquiring their license because of the incessant waves of frustrations they face. Thanks to Anas Aremeyaw`s recent investigations that revealed an open secret of a running national sore of corruption at the DVLA. The fact is that it is very difficult and almost impossible to go through the laid down process and pass the exam when you refuse paying the bribe, a clear indication that institutional and legal order has been overturned and the illegality has been made legal.

In the year 2012, when 100 deaths were recorded out of 9,542 cases of cholera outbreak, our hearts were broken and there was a national well-coordinated campaign by the Ghana Health Services calling on people to keep their surroundings clean. Though our gutters are still choked with filth, people still defecate in open gutters and The Accra Metropolitan Authority is still sweating to dispose garbage in the city, cholera threat has been minimized. But we cannot fathom the reason the Ghana Health Service cannot make carnage on the road as a national health issue just as it did to cholera, malaria, ebola and other diseases. This is because road accident is among the top causes of death annually than typhoid fever, pregnancy related complications and diabetes (IRIN2009).

We cannot say the Ghana National Road Safety Commission is doing nothing to save the situation. A quick dash to their web page reveals amazing plans in well-turned phrases:

“The National Road Safety Commission has developed a strategic framework (a third in the series of strategies developed since 2001 dubbed National Road Safety Strategy III (2011-2020) alongside key pillars of the UN Decade of Action (2011-2020) with the overall objective of halting the increasing trends of fatalities and injuries by 2015 and reducing same by 50% by the year 2020. Institutions and persons required to implement the strategy to enable the country achieve the Strategic objective must show renewed sense of commitment, urgency and passion towards its achievement. We have a moral, civic and professional responsibility to work tirelessly towards reducing road traffic crashes & casualties to ensure that Ghana remains a country with the safest road transportation system in Africa. The people of Ghana and road users will not forgive us if we fail to live up to our expectation.”

Time, the winged chariot, never ever rests, 2015 is just some few strides away and 2020 within a blink will be with us when we expect to see a 50 percent reduction in road fatalities.

Emmanuel Kpeglah