Drivers ‘fight’ AMA over unwarranted arrest

Drivers are finding it difficult to see eye to eye with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly’s (AMA) new directive requesting drivers to help enforce the bye-law banning commuters from buying from street hawkers or face arrest for non-compliance.

Alhaji Antieye Tetteh, Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the Ghana Private and Road Transport Union (GPRTU), thinks drivers are being harassed needlessly and questions why a driver should be arrested for a passenger’s offence.

“How can somebody commit an offence and then another person is punished for it? It is not tenable. When a driver misbehaves, he is arrested and charged, so how can a passenger misbehave and then the drivers is also arrested,” he told host of Joy FM Super Morning Show, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah on Tuesday.

He said drivers “are so vulnerable” to the dictates of state institutions and wondered why a driver who is supposed to concentrate on the road, will be given an additional responsibility of ensuring that passengers do not buy from hawkers by the roadside.

Alhaji Tetteh asked the AMA to revise its decision because the union does not “want to have conflicts with anybody,” stating that no driver will intentionally stop for passengers to buy things.

According to the AMA, drivers would only be exempted if they forewarn their passengers with inscriptions inside their vehicles cautioning passengers against buying or throwing objects outside. When this directive is carried out by the drivers, passengers would be held solely responsible for their acts.

Alhaji Tetteh, who is also the national vice-president of the GPRTU contested the possibility of having bins in trotros – commercial vehicles – judging from the way the vehicles are moulded.

He insisted that what the AMA is doing is “just giving a dog a bad name” in order to hang it.

Alhaji Tetteh however said his outfit would be prepared to meet the AMA to “find a way out” for the two bodies to working harmoniously.

Story by Isaac Essel/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana