Exactly a year ago, musician and acting Managing Director of Ghana Post Limited, Bice Osei Kuffour (Obour) stated that road accidents are so prevalent in Ghana because road safety is not a priority of stakeholders.
Obour, who was speaking as the Ambassador for the 2021 GhanaWeb Road Safety Campaign, said that road accident will reduce should the seriousness attached to the fight against COVID-19 be directed towards it.
Recounting his near-death experience after an accident with the GhanaWeb Road Safety Campaign team, Bice Osei Kuffour said;
“Recently what has hit the world is COVID-19. When it did, recently, we could go to the extent where there was lock down, nobody should go anywhere and we all abided because we were all scared. Till date, in Ghana, COVID-19 deaths has not hit 1,000 yet. If people get the statistics from road accidents; in 2017, about 4,000 people died from road accidents, 2018, just 2020, between January and October, we had about 2,000 people, dying from road accidents," he said.
Musician and politician, Bice Osei Kuffour, popularly known as Obour, has attributed the high spate of accidents by the day in Ghana to a lack of priority by stakeholders.
According to Obour who has been a massive advocate for road safety in Ghana, the menace of accidents would relatively have been curbed if stakeholders were treating the issue like they did following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Citing the huge numbers, Obour noted that some over 2,000 average cases are recorded on an annual basis because Ghanaians and key stakeholders have failed to accept the menace of accidents as a ‘bigger killer’ and to attach the seriousness with which they fought the deadly Coronavirus, to the road safety campaign.
Recounting his near-death experience after an accident with GhanaWeb Road Safety Campaign team, Bice Osei Kuffour said;
“Recently what has hit the world is COVID-19. When it did, recently, we could go to the extent where there was lock down, nobody should go anywhere and we all abided because we were all scared. Till date, Ghana, COVID-19 deaths has not hit a 1,000 yet. If people get the statistics from road accidents; in 2017, about 4,000 people died from road accidents, 2018, just 2020, between January and October, we had about 2,000 people, dying from road accidents.
“What it means is that, road accident is a much greater killer than COVID-19, malaria, than the deadly pandemics, it’s a bigger pandemic, but we are not seeing it like that,” he stated.
The way forward, he believes, is for government, the National Road Safety Commission and essentially all Ghanaians to take up, religiously, the mandate of spearheading a national campaign on Road Safety.
This will also include pushing the agenda for a period of about 3-5 years; during this period, everybody should, play their respective roles and observe judiciously, the road safety rules.
“When Ghana sees road accidents as a killer, because the country spends, because the country spends, the last statistics I saw, it was almost 12 million on associated issues on road accidents and deaths. If we were to pay particular attention and have it as a national campaign for 5 years, where every opportunity, we are reminding people that driving is a profession and that when you are driving, it is guided by its rules and regulations and the enforcement is on, then we'll be on a very great part to changing things,” he added.
The GhanaWeb Road Safety Campaign forms a part of the numerous projects GhanaWeb has rolled out as part of its 22nd-anniversary celebrations.
The year-long campaign dubbed #GhanaWebRoadSafety took off on Monday, March 1, 2021, and will focus on three key areas: indiscipline on roads; bad roads, and potholes that contribute to road accidents and absence of streetlights.
The campaign is being executed in partnership with major stakeholders including the Ghana Road Safety Commission, the Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate of the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Highway Authority, the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, the Ghana Fire Service, the Ghana National Ambulance Service and the Drivers and Vehicle Licensing Authority.
The campaign is also spearheaded by musician and politician Bice Osei Kuffour (Obour) as the Ambassador.
Join in the conversation by sharing your videos about indiscipline, bad roads and accidents on all our social media platforms; Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at @TheGhanaWeb and to our Whatsapp number: 0552699625
