It comes rather as a
shock to see that something like a revolutionary movement has sprung up in
parts of Akuapem, and this is happening literally on the road, and obviously
with the tacit support of those who would normally show concern. If you have
travelled lately on the Akuapem road you would notice that do-it-yourself speed
ramps have appeared suddenly across the road from Gyankama to the end of
Ahwerease; this expanse of the highway includes the passage in front of Aburi the
Girls School and the Crafts village on the by-pass.
There are more than 60 of
these DIY road bumps on a stretch of road which is less than two kilometers
long. What on earth is going on? Strictly speaking, these are illegal
obstructions on the road which you would not expect in Akuapem. By any
standards, this number of illegal humps across a mere two kilometer road stretch
is not only excessive but an affront to the country’s legitimate authority. Akuapem
is not the only place where citizens have decided to erect these ramps but
nowhere would you find so many of them over such a short stretch of road, but
to find this in the placid Akuapem Hills calls for an investigation into What
Went Wrong!
We are talking here not
of properly engineered road bumps but hastily constructed ones made usually of
dirt and in material that is mixed in the dirt at the time of collection. This
sometimes includes glass and metal objects which can cause tyre punctures, but
which is probably the whole point of the setting up the ramps whose object is
to slow traffic to a crawl.
This is the background
to what is going on. Akuapem is situated on the range of mountains that stretch
from Kwahu through the Volta Region into Togo. Its cool climatic conditions
acted as the main magnet for the earliest Presbyterian missionaries who
established their first schools in the area. The Aburi Botanical Gardens which
served as the resting place for colonial governors was built in the 19th
century. Akuapem was one of the first places to be served with motorable roads
in the country. In the late 1950s, not long after independence, President Nkrumah
selected Peduase, a small village nestling in the crook of the hills as the
site for a presidential lodge that would serve the same function as the
Botanical gardens did for the colonial governors.
However, because it is
a difficult terrain for more than a century, the Akuapem road remained a small,
winding road with hairpin turns and gravely shoulders. Sometimes when the rocks
fell during a rainstorm the road became unusable causing traffic to be diverted
elsewhere. A constant feature in every speech delivered by the Omanhene at the
annual Odwira durbar is a call to the government to improve the road. Those
requests were normally politely acknowledged and ignored because of the cost
and complexity involved. However, according to media reports, at his first
Odwira as President, Mr. Kufuor accepted the challenge a new road was built
from scratch from Ayi Mensah at the foot of the hill to Mamfe at the top.
All indications are
that the people loved the road as did the hundreds of thousands of motorists
who use it every year. The economic importance of a good road serving Akuapem
and through to Koforidua cannot be overstated. The “Mountains” area has tourism
potential in spades. Furthermore, Akuapem has become a dormitory area for the
Accra conurbation – a situation that has been hastened by the arrival of the
new road.
Unfortunately, the
upshot of the illegal piling of dirt across swathes of the road is that it is
being destroyed and potholes are replacing the smooth asphalt surfaces which
were laid just about seven years ago. Some of these potholes have appeared at Ahwerease and others are beginning to
appear in the areas where the informal bumps have been erected. It is possible
that the short hop in front the Aburi Girls School will be filled with ridges
in the next few months. The question is, what is going on?
According to the
residents of the towns mentioned, vehicles driving through on the new road
drive as if they were on some uninhabited stretch instead of driving through
populated areas. In the first two years of the new road several pedestrians
were killed or seriously injured in accidents in which speed was the main
issue. They say that they brought this to the attention of the authorities,
including making several trips to the Ministry of Roads and Highways without
any effect. The latest round of ramp construction apparently occurred when a
young man was killed while crossing the road a few weeks ago.
It can be argued that
the residents of these towns have a case, and may be they do. The
responsibility for ensuring safety on the road should be shared, in the sense
that the Ministry of Roads and Highways or its appropriate agencies should
ensure that there is sufficient information and other infrastructural devices
to alert drivers to their environment. Of course, this is what the residents
have been campaigning for without success which has compelled them to resort to
drastic measures.
However, the residents
should not be allowed to continue piling dirt across a well made road. The
effect of that method of road calming is the inevitable destruction of the
road. Again, the Ghanaian mentality regarding road crossing has to be reformed
because it is at the core of much of the road traffic accidents involving
pedestrians. Akuapems do not want to turn their new road into potholes but they
need protection. The appropriate agency must put alert signs on the road and do
proper road calming methods where necessary. It is only through such sound
measures that lives will be saved and the road not turned into a long parade of
potholes.
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