Confusion in Tema (Final part)

Tema is a city that has something truly mysterious about it. Check Site 21 and ask to see Lama and he’d brief you all about the genesis, exodus and revelations of the harbour city.

Crash into Kwame Korkorti and he’d analyse the chemistry underlying the behaviour of Tema residents. And I invite you to meet honourable Kofi Owuo alias Death-By-Poverty who is happiest when cost of living is high.

It started as an industrial city, a workers’ paradise, born of Kwame Nkrumah, suffered under Busia (he sold TDC houses), was crucified on the cross of scanty rainfall and high cost of cocoyam. Today, Tema is like Hong Kong, a very expensive city. You even have to pay for rubbish you dispose yourself.

Even Ashaiman otherwise known as Hanoi is better, enjoying a very low cost of living. The only difference is that in Hanoi, you sometimes have to live with pigs, and pigs are not gentlemen at all. They don’t have character!

Yes, talk about Tema and you’re talking about a place like Bronx or Manhattan, a boiling pot of all ethnicities and races.

People come from the deepest jungle of Brong Ahafo where monkeys are next-door neighbours. You’ll find a confused teenager fresh from Jamasi shoe-shining and addicted to kokonte. You won’t fail to notice a retired seaman who has forgotten he is from Elmina and needs to go back home and die. And you’d find an array of East Asians but you’ll never know which is the Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Filipino. They sneeze the same way!

Home life in Tema is serene except that when a housewife is peeling cassava for fufu, a stubborn goat may approach her and ask for a bite. If she refuses, the goat may decide to take a chunk by force. You can’t drive it away using a kitchen-fan, so you have to use blows. But if the animal is a southpaw, it becomes a challenge for the angry housewife.

The cosmopolitan nature of the city makes night life interesting. You’ll meet people of all kinds, shapes, haircuts and mentality and you learn a lot from each other. It is even more enjoyable when you can blow beer and kebab regularly without developing financial constipation.

Tema used to be a very peaceful, orderly place until recent times when the Black Cat incident caused a big stir. Instead of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) taking time to review the method used in dealing with the floating drivers, they discharged Black Cat and replaced him with a more formidable gun-wielding task force. The move was seen largely as a sure recipe for imminent clash, because the LTs and minibuses were still being chased around in the metropolis, this time with warning shots.

At least, Black Cat wasn’t using firearms for the operation. He used muscle and ferociousness. Compared to the new task force, Black Cat was a more benevolent enforcer. And with the new task force, even taxi drivers were not permitted to stop and pick passengers. What a regulation!

It didn’t take a prophet of the calibre of Elijah to predict that another nasty incident was in the pipeline. What beat the imagination of everybody was why the Metropolitan Chief Executive still endorsed the use of the task force following the turbulent Black Cat incident.

Well it happened again that a taxi driver was arrested by task force men and during the confrontation, the man was allegedly brutalised and killed. News spread city-wide about the death and angry drivers, allegedly supported by other residents, charged on the premises of the TMA.

On the occasion, the Chief Executive, Nii Armah Ashittey, was reported to have been smarter than a rat. With incredible speed, he dashed downstairs, dived into his car, and his experienced driver changed gears and fired the accelerator and wheeled him to safety. God bless his soul!

There was wanton destruction of property and looting. By the following day, it turned out that the dead man whose obituary notice caused the commotion was alive, after all, hale and hearty. Another miraculous resurrection was registered in the annals of the harbour city. The dead man was said to have only been treated and discharged.

The next day, suspects were rounded-up- 239 of them including a few women. They were brought to the Community One Police Station, screened and 18 put before court. The courts will decide their innocence or guilt and punishment thereof.

Meanwhile, certain issues must be resolved once and for all. First, much as the offending drivers are misconducting themselves and defying metropolitan rules and regulations, the mode of arresting them is crude and uncivilised.

You don’t forcibly arrest a taxi driver and start dragging him for stopping to pick a passenger. If anything, he must be given a ticket or summoned.

In any case, Tema is the only city taxis are mandated to operate from a rank and must not pick passengers in town. So if you’re three miles from the taxi rank, you must walk there to pick a taxi. I don’t think this is fair to anybody!

Secondly, the GPRTU must find a solution to the problem of floating drivers without causing pandemonium because using a task force is proving dangerous for everybody and it has caused a major disquiet twice already, aside many minor ones.

When President Rawlings visited Tema a day after the disturbances that is on May Day he stressed on the need to maintain peace and order in the city. It goes without saying that violence and disturbances must be prevented at all cost. And if the task force which is currently still operating is not disbanded, another, even nastier incident, is bound to happen.

If Nii Armah Ashittey is still unable to comprehend the intricacies of the problem and foresee that with the task force still in place, trouble is again inevitable, then it is very unfortunate. It has happened twice already and we have still not learnt a lesson!

I urge him to sit down with the GPRTU executives and do some brainstorming about how best to solve the problem without using a task force.

Residents of Tema want to live peacefully and deserve that right!

This article was first published on Saturday May 18, 1996