On a typical market day’s journey at Agomanya in the Eastern Region, either by driving your own vehicle or by public transport, one will have the obnoxious experience of having to endure about an hour of horrible traffic just at the market square.
This is troubling especially on a stretch that pans just about some 300 metres across the face of the Agomanya market.
The situation is occasioned by the several market–related activities by transport operators of one kind or the other; minivans, trotros, aboboyaa, wheelbarrows, KIA, and other trucks as well as human traffic either making their way into or out of the market and conducting their activities on the road.
The age-old frustration experienced by drivers and passengers in the traffic build-up cannot be over-emphasized. Though police have tried maintaining order at the scene to ensure smooth flow of traffic, this has not been a regular feature as the law enforcement officers are only seen conducting this duty once in a while.
The traffic situation is occasioned by drivers guilty of creating chaos and police inaction to enforce the law and apprehend offending drivers who park, pick, drop passengers, and load goods right in the middle of the road, blocking the flow of oncoming traffic.
Speaking in an interview, some frustrated drivers and passengers blamed colleague drivers for creating the mess on the road.
A KIA driver, Samuel Offei who transports goods from Agorjor to the Agomanya market chided the situation on drivers loading at the entrance of the market, creating a massive traffic scene in the process.
He suggested that a separate station be created for them to ease the congestion at the location. He said, “The problem is they have been loading at the junction where we have been branching into the market and it has been causing problems for us so unless they give us some station over there so that the traffic will stop choking over there.”
Describing how the situation affects motorists and passengers, Offei complained that they end up spending hours on end in the jam. “We keep long more than two hours in the traffic so they have to do something about it,” he appealed.
He added that persistent complaints to the police and other authorities to address the canker have fallen on deaf ears.
Another driver, Peter Kpabi who loads from Agomanya to Ashaiman expressed similar views. He said, “We don’t have a station so this is where we load to get our daily bread.”
He recounted several police crackdowns on their activities in the past aimed at ending their loading activities on the road but added that they’d continue to defy the police action until they have their station.
“At first police used to come and sack us here…and like we were telling them we don’t have a station so we’ll work here and we’re working too till the time we’ll get a station, if we get a station, we’ll leave.”
Peter said several appeals for a station to ply their activities have yielded no fruits.
GhanaWeb also spotted an obviously frustrated passenger in the front seat of a taxi. The woman who gave her name Juliana Mamle said she had been caught up in the traffic for thirty minutes and was still nowhere near the end.
For her, spending this period of time in a stretch she crosses in less than five minutes on an ordinary day is worrisome.
She joined the drivers in calling for a solution.
The station master at the Agomanya-Tema-Ashaiman station, Kpabitey Joseph admitted that their activities contributed to the traffic mess on the road.
According to him, they together with officials of the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Assembly and personnel of the Odumase District Police Command roamed the Agomanya market in search of a space where they can operate but found none, compelling them to load on the road.
“We are loading in the middle of the road because the market is small so it cannot accommodate a station so we roamed the station [in search of a loading space] because it’s the vehicles that transport the traders to and from the market and so we’re forced to operate from here because we don’t have any space in the market,” explained Mr. Kpabitey.
Admitting further that their operations were creating the congestion, he said, “As we load on the road, most of the vehicles don’t have access to pass and this causes the traffic.”
But the Ashaiman drivers are not the only drivers guilty of creating the chaos. Floating drivers who ply the Somanya-Kpong road are guilty of the same as this correspondent observed a melee of illegal traffic activities right in the middle of the road.
Mr. Kpabitey said, “The floating cars also load in the middle of the road and they worsen the situation.”
He, therefore, appealed to the Municipal Chief Executive for Lower Manya Krobo and the Municipal Assembly to ensure the provision of a station for them to address the problem.
