Features
What Country Are We Living In?
In Ghana, when one purchases a car, there is the need to insure it because it is mandatory and a policy which is known as Motor Vehicles (Third Party Insurance) Act 1958. The passage and subsequent assent of the Insurance Act 2021 (Act 1061) has repealed the Insurance Act 2006 (724) and now serves as the legal instrument for the regulation and supervision of the insurance market.
As a result of the new policy, the annual premium for the least motor insurance policy-third party insurance is now fetching GHc 471.00 for private cars which hitherto cost GHc 70.00 while that of commercial cars (taxis) has been priced at GHc 576.00 per annum.
MOTOR THIRD PARTY ACT 1958
The Motor Third Party Act of 1958 states that “all vehicle owners must have cover that provides unlimited bodily injury and death compensation to third parties such as occupants, fare-paying passengers and pedestrians”.
Throughout the world, Motor Vehicle Insurance is mandatory for all vehicles using public roads under the various Road Transport acts and Ghana is no exception. However, fixing of amount is done not to inconvenience motorists and car owners unnecessarily and unduly. Our situation in Ghana, is different with motorists being stretched to unbearable limits.
Besides, car owners and motorists cannot ply our roads if they failed to comply with the road safety regulations which include road worthiness certificate which certifies that your car is in good condition to be on the road as well as Driver’s license which authorizes you to drive. These together with motor vehicle insurance, are mandatory for all road users.
HIGH INCREASE IN VEHICLE INSURANCE AND OTHERS
It is instructive to know that fees charge for the renewal of road worthiness certificate have also increased by huge margin this year, likewise the acquisition of driver’s licence. That is to say, motorists are being subjected to harsh and difficult conditions in the country this year.
My car insurance for 2022 is expected to expire on 21st January, 2023. As a normal practice, I do not allow the expiry date to pass completely before renewing my insurance and road worthiness certificate. I therefore, drove to the Kaneshie branch of the State Insurance Company near the Awudome cemetery to my insurance providers to renew my third party insurance cover for which in 2021, I paid a colossal amount of GHc 230.00 for my Toyota Corolla saloon car which is over 10 years old. I anticipated to pay not more than GH¢300.00 in view of the recent increase in the annual premium for third party insurance. I did so to avoid constant harassment from the police who are desperate and cashing in this festive periods to squeeze money from innocent motorists and car owners.
UNAUTHORISED ROAD CHECKS BY POLICE
It may interest my readers to know that even on my way to SIC office from Mamprobi in Accra, I was confronted on two occasions by police personnel who massed at vantage points along the roads conducting what they described as routine checks and doing their own thing. Since my papers were all genuine and intact, I did not have any problem with them at all and was allowed to proceed. Interestingly, you could imagine the number of cars including private ones that had been stopped and interrogated by the police. Definitely, most of them would have to pay bribes to avoid the wicked hands of the police officers who claimed they were on official duty at that time. It is a daily routine for our police personnel to squeeze something out from unsuspecting car owners and motorists and believe me if you go to that area now, you see them there doing their own thing. It is so surprising that the police instead of maintaining law and order by ensuring that motorists drive carefully and safely on our roads, they are rather checking car documents and drivers’ licences just after the Christmas and New Year holidays when people have exhausted their finances on family issues.
AN ISSUE FOR THE IGP TO DEAL WITH
This a matter which should engage the attention of the Inspector General of Police since some officers are misconducting themselves and soiling the hard earned image of the Ghana Police Service.
Just after the Kaneshie First Light, I spotted not less than 12 cars stopped by the police for interrogations. That was not the best for a nation called Ghana and I wondered whether this issue of bribery and corruption would ever end so soon.
The situation in the main auditorium of the SIC offices at Kaneshie was a different ball game. The hall was virtually empty with less activity in place. Few customers including myself, who had gone there to transact business or to renew their individual motor vehicles insurance were so amazed with the high premium they were slapped with. It appears that this new fees have not been highly advertised and, therefore when the amounts were mentioned to motorists and the car owners, you could see anger on their faces. The percentage increases, are sometimes more than 150 per cent. Those who could not afford the amount walked quietly from the SIC auditorium fuming. This is the kind of unhealthy situation motorists and car owners are being subjected to in their own country. Is that an issue of Ghanaians being deprived of owning their own cars?
BUSINESS AT THE KANESHIE MAIN SIC AUDITORIUM
What transpired at the SIC office at Awudome in Accra, was not an isolated case as it spans across all the insurance companies across the country. Nobody is blaming or stopping the government from raising the premium of insurance of motor vehicles in the country since it has been a normal practice worldwide. However, in doing so there should be enough and adequate education on the new fees. Besides, we have to take cognisance of the fact that we have an economy which is grappling with difficulties and challenges, a shattered economy in which money is difficult to come by. People continue to enjoy low incomes and are unable to cater for their families and relations. Owning a car in this country is a privilege not a luxury. It comes at a great cost since incomes are invested towards the maintenance and fuelling of the car. With all these economic hardships in place, one expects our leaders to have compassion in fixing rates or premium that would be affordable by motorists and car owners. At least these increases should be a bit flexible and accommodative in order not to inconvenience car owners and motorists.
BAD NATURE OF OUR ROADS
What is even shocking and surprising is that while steps are taken to increase these premiums and charges, most of our roads across the country remain bad and unmotorable, thus contributing to a lot of accidents. Why can’t we spend some of these indirect taxes to fix our roads to avoid the unnecessary accidents? Just move around Accra and its environs and observe the bad and deplorable nature of the roads. The deep potholes in some of the major roads are, indeed, an eyesore as they pose danger to the vehicles and pedestrians. Typical examples are the road linking Mamprobi to Kaneshie as well as the Kaneshie First Light area, where motorists are confronted with huge potholes. Also, just drive along the Accra-Korle-Bu- Mamprobi road and you will notice the extent of damage on that stretch. The question then is, what are all these taxes from the road sector being used for when most of our major roads remain unmotorable? We pause for an answer from those in charge.
Most Ghanaians are wondering whether in the midst of what is happening, there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. Certainly not at this time, when those who are supposed to manage the economy and for that matter the road sector, are not doing what is expected of them but are interested in squeezing money from unsuspecting motorists and car owners for their selfish ambitions.
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By Charles Neeqaye
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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