Some of these hawkers sell along the busy word that has become traffic prone
I grew up at Kpong, in the Eastern region, and even though we left Kpong in 1998, my family has always been back to the area in one way or another.
At least, for now, my family home at Akrade makes Kpong an equally regular place for us. Besides that, we still have great friends and family at Kpong.
Whenever I go through Kpong on weekends, particularly on the first and last weekends of each month, I would have to wake up to unbearable traffic caused on the road because of the high numbers of cars traveling to and from the Volta region and the growing number of hawkers selling Abolo and One-Man-Thousand and all your other favorite foods from this side of town on it, it irks me bad.
Travel towards Akosombo and you will experience even worse traffic from sometimes, all the way from Akrade, to Atimpoku. This is due to the toll booth on the Adomi Bridge most of the time. And of course, the hawkers of Abolo and One-Man-Thousand too make the drive through the Bridge area equally irritatingly tortuous.
But recently, I was speaking with my big sister just at the time I entered another unbelievable traffic at Kpong when it dawned on me that our authorities in this country aren’t as serious about development as they preach it.
For those who do not know, there is a road off the main Kpong road that takes you the main river bank. It used to be a very busy area when I was a child and for whatever reasons, business there just collapsed, or, was moved elsewhere.
The roads there are unmotorable and the few fisher-folk who still live around there clearly typify poverted lifestyles. It is nearly a ghost community today but the road is still present, albeit terrible to drive on.
And for those who do not know this road, it connects you straight through Kpong, without you having to drive on the main Tema-Akosombo road. It is a great avenue for new businesses and surely a resourceful alternative road that should be made a priority but hey.
When the Adomi Bridge was undergoing repair works a few years back, a diversion was created through Senchi, across the river, via a pontoon, and through to Juapong, for those traveling into the Volta Region. Those days were equally hectic and the traffic was perhaps worse than it is now but people still used that road because it was all there was.
Soon, the Bridge was operational again and then the traffic returned to the main road.
Personally, that decision to bring back all the traffic on the main road was a wrong one and that pontoon should not have been moved to wherever it was moved to.
That road could and should have been maintained to direct traffic of, for instance, heavy duty trucks or cars hoping to use the option of driving over the river, on a pontoon, to patronize it. It could have been a strict policy that heavy trucks should join the pontoon while other classes of vehicles use the main road.
After all, how many people around the southern parts of the country have ever seen pontoons or driven on them before? Back to Kpong, there is a direct road from the Manya Krobo Senior High School side of the town, through to the exit point of Kpong on the Tema-Akosombo road that has been, till date, totally ignored. That road would have been a good bypass for people connecting from places like Odumase, Nuaso, Somanya, to Accra but wanting to use the Accra Motorway side.
If you tried using that road today, it would take you an entire day to drive on it. You get my drift? So, what at all is wrong with us? Why is it so difficult for us to make life easy for ourselves?
I don’t know if I am overthinking but maybe some other person(s) who know better can help me here?
This country needs fixing and this surely passes for the show. Enough has been said about our leaders waking up and getting the country working. If the economic numbers and inflation issues are so dear to the hearts of our leaders, I wish to submit to them that it matters less in the eyes and minds of the people who are troubled about things like what this continuous traffic situation at Kpong and Atimpoku poses to them.
Etsey Atisu is a trained journalist, a writer and an author. He has a deep passion for writing right and strives to achieve that always. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies (Public Relations) from the Ghana Institute of Journalism and has been practicing journalism for close to 12 years. He currently writes for GhanaWeb.com. If Etsey is not writing, he would most probably be talking (professionally) or singing.
He is married to his best friend and they are blessed with an amazing daughter.