GPRTU kicks against proposals to ban night travels over road crashes

The Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) and some of its drivers are kicking against proposals for a ban on night-time long-distance travels in response to the increasing road carnage on the country’s highways.

They believe that road crashes are mainly caused by the poor nature of the country’s roads and not due to driver error.The country continues to record high fatalities on major inter-city links, including the Winneba-Cape Coast, Accra-Kumasi and the Techiman-Kintampo-Tamale roads.

On Monday dawn, [March 9, 2020] a fatal crash involving a Sprinter bus and Grandbird bus on the Tamale-Kintampo road led to the death of 31 people with many of them burnt beyond recognition due to a resultant fire outbreak.

There is a proposal for night-time commercial travels to be banned as a temporary measure to address the increasing spate of crashes. But the GPRTU says such a ban is unnecessary and will not solve the problem.

The First Trustee of GPRTU, John Tetteh in interview said Ghana should consider other options and not such a ban.

“When you ban night travelling, it wouldn’t solve the problem. Are we the only nation that travels at night? There are other nations that travel at night so let’s do the right thing,” he said.

Meanwhile, some drivers blamed the poor nature of roads for the recurring fatal crashes.“Most of the accidents are not caused by drivers. Almost all our roads are in poor states and most of the roads are single-lanes.

The roads are just bad. I’ve heard the Minister argue that the Kintampo road is good and such accidents should not have happened there. To me, the accidents on that road are caused by a spirit,” one driver said.

Another driver said, “Our roads are bad so when a driver overtakes a car, it is likely to result in an accident. When the roads are good, there will be no accident and drivers will not be tired in the first place.”