Road Accidents Killing Our Crème-De-La-Crème!

The month of November has been a catastrophic one particularly, for our dear nation Ghana.

This is because we have recorded a number of sad events some of which include the Achimota Melcom disaster, Ex Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama's demise as well as the gory accident on the Tamale-Bolgatanga highway over the weekend.

Road accidents have become a canker Ghana can still not fight and which is killing our crème-de-la-crème every now and then.

I was shocked when i first read the gruesome Tamale-Bolga accident on Ghanaweb,17/11/12 which said 28 people had died and then later on the figure rose to 33.

I personally lost a close pal of mine; he was the deputy director of birth and death in Ashanti Region. Students of the University of Development Studies (UDS), who were on their way for their graduation ceremony, also met their untimely death.

The mindboggling question then remains that when at all are we going to stop losing our intellectuals and future leaders to road accidents?

These students were going to receive their certificates in order to join the working force of Ghana and beef up the human resource of the country.

We have lost breadwinners to this road accident and with this, many families are going to be placed under severe economic hardship since those sponsoring students and families are gone forever.

Victims of the accident held vital positions which brought great impact to the nation, increased productivity and brought development but has been lost forever.

The causes of road accidents have not changed one bit at all. Eversince my days at the primary school till date we are still dying from the same carelessness of drivers.

Ghana is no more getting younger so i believe it is high time our policy makers put their feet on the ground to minimise the spate of road traffic accidents if even it would mean heads rolling at certain governmental departments and agencies.

Quite recently in Egypt, the railways minister resigned when there was a train accident. What has the roads and highways minister done to reverse the trend.

I would once again like to call on the National Road Safety Commission(NRSC), including the various transport stakeholders to put strong mechanisms in place especially to punish those useless commercial drivers behind the steering wheels killing people like insects.

*EMMANUEL AGYENFRA BOATENG, FREELANCE JOURNALIST
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