Road transport operators in the country have described as unfortunate the decision by the Ghana Police Service to ban heavy trucks from operating after 6 p.m.
“We were not consulted and that is unfortunate, particularly when, as stake holders, we would have made better input into that decision,” Mr. Mathew Hayford, speaking on behalf of the group, told the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday.
He said if they had been consulted, road transport operators would have pushed for heavy trucks to operate after 10 p.m. when the roads were free and a ban imposed on their movement form 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. when vehicular traffic was heavy.
As the directive now stood, Mr. Hayford said, transporters, particularly those who had to travel from the ports of the country would face great challenges in the transportation of goods in real time. He said transport operators were to meet to decide on their reaction to the announcement of the ban in the January 29, 2011 issue of the Daily Graphic.
The Executive Director of the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), Mr. Noble Appiah, said although the Commission had not been consulted before the announcement of the decision, that was not a big issue.
That was because other considerations, apart from road safety, such as security, might have informed the police in the decision and security agencies normally did not divulge these security concerns, he said.
He, however, said the NRSC would schedule a meeting with the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) as the co-ordinating agency to be apprised of the issues that resulted on the ban on heavy trucks after 6 p.m.
Mr. Appiah conceded that the ban would have an implication for heavy trucks from the ports to landlocked countries in the sub-region but was hopeful that the meeting with the IGP would put some clarity on the matter.