Debates of 18 May 2006

Order! Order! Item 2. Correction of Votes and Proceedings, Wednesday, 17th May 2006. Pages 1…6?

Mr. Speaker, I
am sorry to take you back. When you informed us about the communication from the President, we did not hear you refer it to the Appointments Committee.

Oh, that is very
important. Thank you very much for so reminding me.
Hon. Members, in accordance with
Standing Order 172, I hereby refer the nomination to the Appointments Committee for consideration and report. Thank you very much for so drawing my attention. Pages 4…7?

Mr. Speaker, on page 7, I made a correction yesterday that a member of the committee attended a committee meeting but his name was omitted. Somehow, it is reflected that only the Minister-designate for National Security -- His name was wrongly spelt and it did not show; the page too is incomplete and I wonder whether there is something else which should have been there.

Pages 8…13. Honourable
Members, we do not have any Official Report. Item 3. Statements.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to revisit a Statement made by me on the floor of this House on 17th February, 2006. The Statement focused on the menace being perpetrated on our roads with special emphasis on the 207 Benz buses.
Mr. Speaker, after the presentation the problem of road accidents, deaths on our roads and destruction of property have increased causing the nation dearly in loss of human resources through deaths, dismemberment and maiming of distinguished Ghanaians and others.
Mr. Speaker, I can count about twenty- nine more accidents in which these 207 buses have been involved since I made the Statement. There was an accident at the Apam junction which killed eight people; there was another on the motorway involving a metro bus which also killed 5 people on the spot; and there are many others I cannot write on this paper. But Mr. Speaker, the most pathetic of them all is the one that occurred four days ago on the Kumasi-Sunyani road which involved a 207 bus and the State Transport bus killing over thirty citizens of the State.
Mr. Speaker, the question I want to ask now is, what are we going to do or what action are we taking to combat these numerous accidents on our roads? Many important lives are being lost on our roads because of overspeeding, wrongly parking on the sides of our roads and unnecessary overtaking.
Recently, we lost an industrious statesman in the person of Mr. Ferdinand Ayim and two others in one of these road accidents as a petrol tanker was wrongly parked on the side of the road. It was Ferdinand Ayim yesterday; it could be me or you tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, these 207 buses are causing great damage on our roads. But do we have to sit down and watch these buses decimate our population? Heavy fines and banning for good of drivers' licences after

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise to associate myself with the concerns raised by my hon. Colleague on the spate of accidents.
Mr. Speaker, accidents are very emotional matters. In fact, for a lot of people, the anguish and the pain of the loss of relatives when accidents do occur is a real matter and no one should underrate or understate the effects of road accidents on the general population in terms of physical pains, economic loss and indeed, in all other socio-economic factors. However, I wish to state here and now that there have been several Statements in this House on the spate of accidents and everybody has always supported the need to do something about the incidence.
But let us be realistic about it; accidents will always occur. There is no society in which accidents do not occur and the loss of even one life in an accident is a loss too many. But we should look out for what are the causative factors for accidents. I believe that targeting just one of the multi- faceted causes of road accidents will not help our economy or this country to reduce the spate of accidents.
Time was when the Nissan Urvan bus was identified as the main cause of road accidents. Indeed, there was a time that they were supposed to be banned and they were not supposed to travel beyond some distances. It was immediately realized that that was not an effective way of controlling or reducing road accidents.
Indeed, if we are to go by the evidence that was adduced in this House by the hon. Minister for Transportation, the spate of accidents have actually reduced in this country. They have reduced in numbers and in relation to the total number of vehicles available in the country. The real reason why there is so much concern these days is that reporting has improved; the mass media is now more proactive and because of the nature of reporting, vivid pictures are shown on the nature of accidents.
I wish to state here that while I do not disagree with the need for an investigation into what causes accidents, I think I disagree with the proposal that it should be focused on only 207 Mercedes Benz buses. In her own example, in the loss of our dear friend, Mr. Ferdinard Ayim, the vehicle that was involved was not a 207 bus; it was a fuel tanker. This is to indicate that many more vehicles are involved in accidents than 207 buses. Probably her sample of about twenty-seven buses might be because she has focused on only 207 buses but if one were to take the totality of vehicles involved in accidents, the
statistics might have revealed that there were other type of vehicles that were involved in accidents.
Beyond that, even though there might be a correlation between accidents and Mercedes buses, it does not necessarily mean that there is a causal relationship; they might be associated. But one cannot say, even if there were that correlation, that the cause of the accidents was the 207 buses. It could have been the other way round that they are probably the victims. Much as I agree with her concern, and all of us indeed should be concerned about reducing the spate of accidents, there are other factors that we should look at beyond targeting a single model or a single type of vehicle.
So I would suggest that the so-called study that is recommended could go ahead but it should not be focused on just that bus. I am aware that the newly strengthened National Road Safety Commission as we remember, was a committee until 1999 when it was transformed into a Safety Commission which gave it more powers and more resources to do its work.
We are all witnesses to the efforts that the Road Safety Commission is making these days. But as I have said, there is nowhere in the world that accidents do not occur. Indeed, if we look at the statistics in our subregion, the rate of accidents in Ghana has come down so significantly that we are now one of the countries that others can look up to.
The Road Safety Commission hosts a number of other Commissions and worldwide our Commission is reputed to be one of the best. The other causes of accidents include the age of vehicles and I must say it was a big let-down to safety- conscious people when in 2001/2002 we allowed over-aged vehicles, twenty-five
years and beyond to be imported into this country.
It was a let-down when we allowed twenty-five, twenty-six year old double- decker buses that were written off in Europe to be brought into this country; it was a big let-down when we allowed left- hand drive buses that were banned from this country to be brought in at the time some of us warned about the imminent consequences of these policy changes.
Today we are suffering from this spate of accidents that should have been prevented as a direct result of those policy changes. So I believe that the time has come for us to take another look at some of those policies that we have brought into place.

Hon. Deputy Majority
Chief Whip, do you have any point to raise?

Mr. Speaker,
I have been following his argument very attentively. But Mr. Speaker, unless he could produce to us that the spate of accidents is caused by these over-aged vehicles and as a result of our allowing the over-aged vehicles to come into the country, I think that he should not deceive this House.

Hon. Deputy Majority
Whip, this is not a debate, he is only commenting on that so let him continue.

Mr. Speaker, it is one of
the causal factors and it is a multi-faceted problem. Another factor might be the indiscipline of drivers or the behaviour of drivers. As we know, for safety on the roads, there are three main factors, namely, engineering, education and enforcement, popularly known as the three “Es”. If any of these “Es” is not totally effective, it can lead to increased accidents.
In short, my focus is that we should not narrow down the spate of accidents to the 207 buses and prematurely call for a ban on them. If we did that, next day it will be petroleum hauliers and we would say they should be banned. And the next day we will find out that it is private cars that cause it and we would say there should be no private cars in this country.
The next time, in some other areas it would be bicycles and we would say nobody should ride a bicycle. So let us open our minds and take a total view of this particular problem rather than use unscientific methods to determine the main causal factor; and there should be a change in that policy.
With this I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member who spoke earlier seemed to have said almost everything that I had jotted down to say -- [Laughter.] I said “almost”; I did not say “everything”.
Mr. Speaker, the little that I want
to add is about the narrowing down of accidents to 207 buses. There have been several terrible accidents in this country involving hon. Colleagues from this House -- hon. Achuliwor, hon. Acheampong, the formerVice-President, Mr. Arkaah, the urologists, the doctors, and the latest, Ferdinand Ayim; none of them was in a 207 bus. So it is proper that we consider each of the accidents or all of them and see what causes accidents in general.
Mr. Speaker, the use of second-hand tyres, for example, most of them are washed and polished and when you see them on the market you would think they are very good tyres. Most of them are even tyres that are not meant for tropical countries like Ghana. Some are meant for the temperate areas and they are used during snow times. They are not good for

our roads but they all come here as second- hand tyres and we use them.
So, Mr. Speaker, you may see a tyre, which looks very new, you use it and between here and Kumasi you may lose about four (4) tyres. And if you happen to lose a front tyre when you are on a highway, anything can happen; but we allow all these tyres to come in without any examination.
Mr. Speaker, the use of what the
mechanics call “alteration”, some also say, “approtech”, -- Most of these cars are so old that the parts are not available. They take them to Kumasi Magazine or Kokompe in Accra and try to manufacture anything which they fix. We should look at some of all these things and perhaps give those mechanics the requisite training or give them education that it is good and proper to fix parts that are meant for the car and not try to put anything there which would work, perhaps, temporarily.
Mr. Speaker, we can also look at the
human factor - the police on the road. Recently on one of the FM stations the Ashanti Regional Police Commander was saying that they had arrested 108 people and they were sent to court and the total fine amounted to about ¢94 million. On the average each of them may have been fined less than a ¢1,000,000. It may be true that not everybody who was sent to court was found guilty so that, perhaps, a number of them may have been found guilty and they have paid between ¢1 million and about ¢10 million. But, Mr. Speaker, if you have to take records from our courts, some of the drivers are fined as low as ¢200,000 when they have been charged for careless driving, and pleaded guilty in accidents where people have died. So the drivers may think that, at least, they can do anything on the road and get away with it.
After all, some of them boast that if you take your car you do not take their licence. Mr. Speaker, how many of these drivers on our roads have their licences even endorsed by the police or the courts after they have been found guilty? They only pay their fines and walk away. There are no records on them. So the drivers who may have caused several accidents and who could have been banned are still on the road.
There is the need to keep records of these cases so that the drivers could be either kept off the road or suffer some punishment, like being suspended for six months, one year and so on, so that when they come back they would be more careful.
Mr. Speaker, when you look at the
action of the police -- I know they may not be comfortable with this but we have to say it. I have always been using my constituency as an example. When you go to the Kade Police Station, for example, in most cases you find only one or two people at the counter. You go there and they tell you they do not have the men. But go there on market days, they would mount several road checks with each of the checkpoints having about four to five policemen. If they can have these people on the road, why can they not be at the counter and check other crimes? This is because they come there and make money.
Mr. Speaker, I have been there myself -- I have said it and I am saying it again. You will see the policemen mounting the roadcheck, drive past them, stop a few metres away and do your own check of the cars that pass. They are loaded three in front and four at the back. That is overloading. What happened in Kumasi three or four days ago? The vehicle was meant for 23 people but it had 36 people on board.
Meanwhile, that bus had gone past police checkpoints. They see them and say, “Oh, they are attending a funeral. This
is a social function”. But at the end of the day overloading is overloading. And when cars are overloaded they lose their balance and for that matter the driver at each point in time finds it difficult to control the car in case of emergency.
So if the Police would be up and doing and perform the task that they are supposed to do when they are on the road, I think, to a very large extent, we can reduce the road accidents. It should not be the police alone, but even responsible citizens including the various unions, the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), the PROTOA, the Coperative and all the driver unions.

Mr. Speaker, there is a second example of where the sign of a meandering road was shown to a driver, and he was asked “When you see the meandering sign, what does it mean?” He said, “Oh, snakes - the place is infested with snakes”. [Laughter.] Mr. Speaker, it looks like a joke but we must be serious. The interviewer just laughed it off and the driver drove away. Immediately, the union chairman or the executives there should have stopped the driver or even the passengers on board should have insisted that they take their tickets and join another vehicle. But we have all these people on the road.

Mr. Speaker, 207 buses may be involved in an accident but they may not be the causative factors at all times.There may be other factors, so we have to look at these. Perhaps, we could appeal to the newspapers to, at least, allocate a small portion at the corner of the front-page which they have been using for politics to, at least, give a piece of advice to the drivers each day even though most drivers do not read newspapers, I know. But they listen to the FM stations. Almost every bus, trotro or taxi has a radio in Ghana, so the media could also be doing programmes on road accidents and road safety in general. I think these are some of the things that would help us other than limiting it to 207 buses.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for this opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to associate myself with the Statement but in doing so, to emphasise on attitudes and the last bit of what hon. E.K. Salia said -- enforcement. Our attitudes to driving and discipline generally in this country are responsible for what happens on the roads in terms of accidents. People drink, get drunk and they are driving; everybody knows that. Others take hard drugs and they are in high gear themselves. Their minds are in high gear before they start the engine that they are supposed to control. With these things, unless we check them, we will continue to have the problems of accidents, no matter what make of car we are using. Fortunately for us, the President, in his wisdom, has created a Ministry of Information and -- is it conscientization or orientation? [Laughter.] Which of them, I do not know.
I am urging that Ministry to make sure that regular classes are organized for groups of drivers. In fact, there are

Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with the Statement on the floor and I want to commend highly the hon. Member who made the Statement for bringing it up. Much of what I consider relevant points have been raised on this topic and I want to add a few of them.
Mr. Speaker, my first point is about licences of drivers. Mr. Speaker, sometimes you see juveniles -- certainly not over eighteen by their looks -- and yet they are driving commercial vehicles. How
they come by the licences to drive those vehicles, I do not know, when they are not even qualified to drive at all. So I think that if one is under eighteen, a juvenile, he should not be driving at all; he should not. Somehow some of them go there and within a twinkle of an eye they are issued with the licence.
So the belief is that issuing of licences has now been commercialized; if you can pay for it you get it as fast as you want it. Mr. Speaker, I think the licensing authorities ought to sit up and enforce the rules and regulations guiding the issuing of licences.
Mr. Speaker, I saw an accident where a taxi driver ran into a trotro. There was a lot of pandemonium there so I had to stop. When I asked what was going on they said some young boy was driving the taxi, there was a queue, he came, and he could not stop so he went into the trotro and when he got down he simply ran into the crowd and disappeared. Apparently he had gone to look for his master to come and cover up for him. Some of these commercial drivers allow small boys to drive while they sit at the lorry stations playing draughts and cards when they are the people supposed to be driving those vehicles. All these contribute to the accidents that we see on the roads.

On a point of
order. I was up earlier but I did not catch Mr. Speaker's eye. My very good Friend made a statement which I think I would plead with him to withdraw because of the records. I heard him say that if you have
money in Ghana you can buy a driving licence - [Interruptions]- Please, this is a national Parliament - [Interruptions.]

Order! Order!

Mr. Speaker, it is my
considered view that this is a national Parliament and we should not say in our national Parliament that we have got to a state where we are buying driving licences. I think that is not right, and Mr. Speaker, I crave your indulgence to ask him to withdraw that.

Mr. Speaker, thank
you very much. If my tall hon. Friend wants to play an ostrich, that is his business; I will not play one. I am not an ostrich. I would not bury my head in the sand and pretend that what is going on is not going on.
Mr. Speaker, the other point is lack of

On a point of
order. Mr. Speaker, hon. Ndebugre rose on a point of order against the hon. Member for Tamale. Mr. Speaker, after you had ruled on that for the hon. Member to continue he made a remark that if my hon. Tough Friend - (Some hon. Members: Tall! Tall!) -- Yes -- tall Friend would want to play like an ostrich, he would not. Mr. Speaker, the rules of the House do not permit hon. Members to refer to hon. Colleagues like - Mr. Speaker, he should refer to him either by mentioning his name as hon. Ndebugre or the hon. Member for so and so constituency, but to describe him as tall and short - [Laughter.] Mr. Speaker, if these things - [Interruptions.]

Order!

Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that if we allow these things to go on he may one day refer to me as “hon. Fatman”. [Laughter.] So Mr. Speaker, he must be called to order.

Hon. Member for Kade,
I do not think that is a genuine fear, let him proceed.

Mr. Speaker, I think that hon. Ndebugre ought to know that there are people here who are envious of his height. I can see that somebody is envious of his height here. I was just about to describe him in terms that he described himself so I will not do it again.
Mr. Speaker, so I think that the police or the licensing office should ensure that these vehicles are maintained and maintained properly before they come for the road maintenance certificate. They should give them thorough checks and make sure that they have been properly maintained before they are issued with the roadworthiness certificates, otherwise we will continue having these terrible
accidents. In fact, some of them have been really disgusting. This one happened on a very popular road so people saw it; there are others which are worse than what we saw on television but they are not covered. Sometimes, they are so disgusting that you cannot take a second look at them.
So I think the Police ought to be more vigilant. I agree with the hon. Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, National Integration and NEPAD that we should create a special highway police unit and properly resource them, give them vehicles, give them motor cycles, give them communication equipment so that they can check such careless driving on the motorways and the highways and communicate easily to the next police station so that such dangerous drivers can be stopped or they could overtake them and slap them with charges that will slow them down. I think that I support that view. That will make the drivers be a bit more cautious than they are now. In fact, most of them are just not cautious.
Lastly, Mr. Speaker, about dangerous overtaking, it has been said here several times -- I have read it in the newspapers, I have heard it on several Frequency Modulation (FM) stations, discussions on dangerous overtaking and yet it is on the increase; it is not reducing. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I dare say that some Members of this House do dangerous overtakings in the mornings when they are coming to the House. They go with hijack lights and their fingers on the horns and maybe because of parliamentary privileges they dangerously overtake and rush to the House. Like someone said, if you want to come early get up early and come early. I think dangerous overtaking ought to be checked, no matter by whom. It is very dangerous and anybody can be killed in the process.
So Mr. Speaker, with these few words,

Mr. Speaker, I would want to angle on vehicles that are abandoned in the middle of the road. Mr. Speaker, I think that many of us have had this heart- throbbing experience of driving and all of a sudden, you realize that a vehicle has crossed the road; it has been abandoned.
Mr. Speaker, if it is in the night then
you would be lucky that you survive. Mr. Speaker, this is where I would, as it were, want to appeal to the police. I know that they may not have sufficient towing vehicles but there is a development in Accra here that I think they can build on. In Accra here I have experienced situations where vehicles have been clamped and when you went to the appropriate authorities they told you that they have ceded that aspect to some private companies. I think that they can look at this kind of arrangement and cede out other areas to private companies.
I know that there are a lot of these towing vehicles which do twenty hours a day. If they are in doubt, my own Kwahu people are at Darkuman; they do this kind of job very well. And they should not shy away; they should pray those services in it. I think that if they do that, it will go a long way, as it were, to curtail the spate of accidents that are caused by the abandoning of vehicles on the road.
Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with the maker of the Statement and express my heartfelt condolence to the bereaved families. I thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker, I am so saddened that recently, on 4th May, 2006,
a long bus conveying workers of Pioneer Food Cannery (PFC) from Accra to Tema was involved in an accident and six of them died on the spot. Three of them later died at the hospital; three others who are women had each of their legs amputated and they are at the hospital at the moment. They were not in a 207 bus.
Mr. Speaker, accidents are becoming too rampant on our roads; the causes are identified - overspeeding, careless driving, overtaking unnecessarily and others. Some drink heavily and drive; some park their vehicles right in the middle of roads and go somewhere. Mr. Speaker, if you want to be a doctor, you go to a medical school. If you want to be a lawyer, you go to a law school. But where do our drivers go? Some of them just learn from friends and relatives. Some of them are driver-mates and before you realize they have become drivers with driving licences. Few of them manage to go to private driving schools.
Mr. Speaker, as a way of curtailing this menace on our roads, I want to suggest to the Government that the time has come for Government to set up government- controlled driving schools so that those who want to be drivers could be trained at such schools. Whether you are an hon. Minister or an hon. Member of Parliament or whoever and you want to drive yourself, you must go to a school and learn the rules and regulations; we should not just learn from anybody. This is my first contribution.
Mr. Speaker, my second contribution is
that, nowadays, we see these long vehicles -- articulated trucks, fuel tankers. Either they have developed problems or they are intentionally parked on the roads, particularly in the night, without sufficient warning, and other road users drive into them and accidents do occur. Mr. Speaker, I would want to suggest that a law should be promulgated that long vehicles -

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the hon. Member who made the Statement because it has come very timely for us in this country. In my contribution, I would be touching on three areas.
Mr. Speaker, it is on record that about 70 per cent of the accidents that occur on our roads involve commercial vehicles; and delving very much into the background of the drivers of such
vehicles, we get to know that many of them lack education. About 50 per cent of them have been educated to either junior secondary school level or a little beyond form four. Many a time, their knowledge regarding regulations is nothing to write home about. Mr. Speaker, I think the recent directive by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) that as from next year, those going for licences would also take written examinations is in the right way. I think this would go a long way in overcoming some of these problems.
Mr. Speaker, this nation has reached a stage whereby we need to properly define whether driving is a profession or not. I am making reference to this issue, especially because of the commercial vehicles. Many a time, if one drops out of school, the easiest vocation that he thinks of is going into driving because he can take a month, three or four and he is on the road driving. If we delve into the backgrounds of those who have been involved in accidents on our roads, mostly, these are the calibre of people who are found most guilty in this matter.
Mr. Speaker, another issue which I would want to touch on which to me would enable us overcome most of these problems, especially regarding dangerous driving on our roads, is this. We have got various stakeholders or organizations all championing the cause of ensuring that our roads are safe. We have the National Road Safety Committee (NRSC), Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) whose jobs are geared towards overcoming this problem.
I think we have reached a stage where we need to establish something national in character so that all these stakeholders would come under one umbrella to ensure that we are able to resolve these matters. This is because, to me, it appears that although the MTTU is doing their best, they are on one line and the NRSC is also on another. But if they come under one

umbrella like the National Road Traffic Authority, they would be in a position to properly synchronize their ideas in order to overcome the problem confronting this nation.
The last issue, which I would like to touch on is the laws regarding punishment or fines on offenders. Mr. Speaker, we recently passed the Road Traffic Act, 2004 and I have had a second look at the various sections and to me, there are certain sections, which cannot stand the test of time.
Mr. Speaker, with your indulgence, I would like to refer to section 1(1) of the Road Traffic Act, 2004. It states and I beg to quote:
“A person who drives a motor vehicle dangerously on road commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction…”
If you turn to subsection (c) it says: “ W h e r e d e a t h o c c u r s , t o imprisonment for a term of not less than 3 years.”

Mr. Speaker, I see this to be too discretionary. That is why many a time judges have the leeway. Mr. ‘A' might commit this offence where death would result. A judge might give him three years. Mr. ‘B' would commit the same offence, and having regard to the circumstances of the case, another judge might give him ten years.

To me, we need to be very specific because if you judge by the sort of carnage being done on our roads, where human lives are lost and at the moment, road accidents are killing Ghanaians more than even the AIDS pandemic -- And seriously, reading this section in tandem with that of subsection 2 (b) -- the

At the Commencement
of Public Business, item 4, Laying of Papers -- the following Papers to be laid -- Minister for Finance and Economic Planning.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister for Finance and Economic Planning is unavoidably absent. May I therefore crave your indulgence to have the Deputy Minister for Finance and Economic Planning lay the Paper on his behalf.

Permission granted.

Item 5, Committee Sittings - any indications?

Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that there are Committee sittings, I would beg to move that this House adjourns till tomorrow at 10.00 o'clock in the forenoon.

Mr. Speaker, I beg to second the motion.
Question put and motion agreed to.