Residents are worried about the situation and want authorities to intervene
Correspondence from the Eastern Region:
The Somanya – Akuse Junction highway has become ‘terror zone’ for motorists and inhabitants of towns and villages along the road, residents have said.
According to members of the communities dotted along the road, pedestrian knockdowns are occasionally recorded on the highway that stretches from Somanya through Okuenya to Akuse Junction.
A resident of Okuenya, Patience Narh said she has no option but to personally lead her children to the roadside and ensure that they safely cross the road before returning home.
“Because there are no ramps on the road, we have to accompany our children to the roadside and help them cross safely to their school because the cars speed,” she said.
“We are therefore appealing for ramps on the road so that when we are not around, the children can safely cross,” she further appealed.
Rebecca Nyarko also shared similar concerns. She said parents have no option but to walk their children across the road on a daily basis to ensure their safety.
She said, “We have problems crossing the road here. If you don’t assist your children cross the road, they can’t do it on their own. This is because there are no ramps here so even if you are busy, you must leave whatever you are doing and take them across the road because if you don’t do this, you may hear something different.”
According to her, residents live in fear due to the speeding manner in which vehicles ply the road and they remain restless until their children return home from school.
She called on authorities of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) to ensure that ramps are fixed on the road.
An octogenarian in the community, Theophilus Kwao Martey told GhanaWeb that ramps were urgently needed on the road to save lives.
“This is our school compound, the children in this school, most of them are less than ten years and very close to the road and not all parents can bring their children to school.
“What we need here most importantly are the speed ramps…the divers coming at top speed will not mind whether there is a child crossing to school or not,” said Mr. Martey.
Unit Committee Chairman of the area, Paul Senyemi on his part recalled instances where school children were ran over by reckless drivers.
“The cars pass at top speed. I remember some five years ago when a car hit one of the students,” he recounted, adding that others have equally suffered similar fate in the last few years with two losing their lives in the process.
To safeguard the lives of the residents and children in the future, the people mobilized to erect artificial ramps. They were however forced by the police to remove these ramps which they described as illegal.
“We were able to use manpower to construct ramps but the police came and ordered us to remove it and we did,” said the Unit Committee Chairman.
He therefore appealed to the Manya Krobo Municipal Authority and the GHA to as a matter of urgency construct speed ramps on the stretch.
Assemblyman for the Okuenya Electoral Area, in an interview said though temporal measures like ship ropes were laid on the road to serve as temporal measures against the speeding vehicles, the ropes disappeared overnight without trace.
He however said he was liaising with the Unit Committee Chairman to sensitise the people on road safety to ensure their security while crossing the road.
Meanwhile, Maintenance Manager at the Eastern Regional Ghana Highway Authority, Ernest Osei Bonsu who earlier spoke to GhanaWeb on the situation, said the Authority, upon a directive from its head office in Accra in 2020 assessed all roads without markings in the Eastern Region and the report forwarded to Accra for the necessary action.
“Our head office in Accra asked us to go on all our roads without markings and speed measures so we’ve taken the inventory to submit it so we are waiting for them to work on it, approve and award it,” he said.