Editorial
Deal with lurking dangers on pavements
Dear Editor,
I write with deep concern about a safety hazard and the dangers commuters are exposed to, especially those who walk in the area at night.
Along one of the busy roads in the capital — the Neoplan Station stretch of the ‘Accra Dubai’ road — lie several culverts with their metal coverings removed, leaving behind gaping holes that endanger everyone who uses the stretch.
It is a danger to commuters who walk around the area. As a regular visitor to that area, I find it very disturbing. In fact, a gaze into the drain can make one feel dizzy — it is very deep.
These are very common sights from the Railway Crossing area to the Awudome Cemetery area, bringing to the fore the activities of scrap dealers who are mostly blamed for the disappearance of the coverings.
They are dangerous and easy to miss. Children walking to school, the elderly, and even motorists risk serious injury if nothing is done.
This is not just a matter of inconvenience; it is a matter of life. We have seen too many cases where a simple oversight leads to irreversible harm.
A child could fall in. A motorcyclist could swerve and crash. A pedestrian could be injured in the dark. These are preventable tragedies, and we must treat them as urgent.
We cannot wait for disaster before we act. I urge the relevant authorities to inspect such areas, replace missing covers, and prioritise public safety. A simple fix today could save a life tomorrow. Let’s not look away — let’s fix what’s broken before it breaks someone.
Kelvin Acheampong
Dansoman
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Dear Editor,
I write to appeal to the Metro Mass Transit Limited (MMTL) to put some of their buses on the Kasoa–Circle route to ease the challenges passengers face every day.
It might interest you to know that going to and from Kasoa is no child’s play. Sadly, it appears we have been left to our fate and at the mercy of greedy ‘trotro’ drivers who employ various tactics to extort money from passengers.
One of the means they usually employ is that at the station, they’ll tell passengers they are not going to Kasoa. However, when you join these vehicles, they take passengers to a point and start calling for new passengers to a different destination. It continues like that until they reach Kasoa. At all the new stops, they collect fresh fares from passengers.
So, it is not true that they are not going to Kasoa — the only reason they do that is to take more money from passengers.
By this behaviour, one ends up spending about GH¢20 for a journey that should cost around GH¢11, and the same amount on the return trip.
This behaviour also results in long queues at the stations at night, giving robbers and pickpockets a field day as they mingle with passengers struggling for transport and end up stealing from them.
I want to plead with the Metro Mass management to put buses on this route to reduce the inconvenience we go through after a day’s work.
The management could also devise ways to make their operations more convenient and reliable, and must consider setting specific times so that passengers would know when buses arrive and when they depart.
Kwesi Pino
Kasoa
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In last week’s issue of The Spectator, we carried a story headlined, “Annual Bagre Dam Spillage, a Blessing or a Curse?”
The story revealed that the spillage of the dam by the management of Burkina Faso has become a perennial challenge for many farming communities along the White and Black Volta basins in the northern part of Ghana.
While thousands of people are displaced, farmers count their losses yearly as entire fields of maize, groundnuts, and rice vanish beneath raging waters. We are also told that mud-walled houses crumble under the force of the floods, roads connecting villages disappear, schools close, and classrooms are turned into makeshift shelters for displaced families.
Although the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) rushes in with relief items such as mattresses, blankets, and bags of rice to mitigate the impact of the flooding, these items — though vital — are often insufficient compared to the magnitude of devastation.
The situation is worrying, but the problem has not been fully addressed, as it has for years caused destruction downstream in many communities, especially among farmers.
It is a pity that, though NADMO continues to urge residents in flood-prone areas across the Upper East, North East, Savannah, and Northern Regions to relocate to safer grounds, for many, relocation is not an option. Their livelihoods are tied to fertile riverbanks, and abandoning their farms would mean giving up the only source of income they know.
Ironically, amidst the destruction, the same flood that wreaks havoc also deposits nutrient-rich silt on farmlands, making them more fertile for dry-season farming.
It is therefore time for the government to construct proper irrigation systems so that these communities can turn disaster into opportunity — using the water to grow crops in the dry season to sustain themselves.
It is also time for the long-promised construction of the Pwalugu Multi-Purpose Dam in the Upper East Region to come to fruition. This project would serve as a buffer for excess water from the Bagre Dam and generate electricity.
There is also the need to control the spillage by starting it gradually each month instead of waiting until the dam is full before releasing the water at once.
The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) should enforce strict measures to prevent construction in flood-prone areas.
Before each spillage begins, ample time should be given to residents through public announcements to enable them to move to safer places ahead of time. Besides traditional media such as radio and television, The Spectator urges authorities to also engage traditional and religious leaders in spreading such messages to ensure residents receive the information early.
We are told the spillage of the dam is necessary to prevent it from collapsing when water levels exceed safe limits. However, it continues to create havoc and has become a yearly cycle of loss and recovery.
The spillage of the Bagre Dam is a recurring disaster that demands an urgent and lasting solution to make life better for residents and farmers.
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