Accra, Oct.4, GNA- Mr Magnus Opare-Asamoah, Deputy Minister of Transport, on Wednesday said that government is determined to make Ghana the transport hub of the West Africa region.

Government, he said, was also resolved to effectively and efficiently play its role as the transit corridor for neighbouring landlocked countries.

Mr Opare-Asamoah was speaking at the International Road Transport Week, organized in Accra jointly by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) and the Federation of Transport Unions (FTU) Ghana. The event held annually, was on the theme: 'Organising globally, Building Union Power, Correcting indiscipline on our roads, Eradicating the carnage on our roads, Addressing undue delays at our frontiers and Fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the country.

Mr Opare-Asamoah said efforts of government must be supported by stakeholders in the industry who are the direct beneficiaries from the operations of an efficient transport system.

He said the spate of avoidable traffic accidents and the resultant injuries as well as the fatalities in the past years were blots on the remarkable strides that had been chalked over the past years.

Since 2001, the fatality rate per 10,000 vehicles has shown a downward trend, the rate has reduced from a high of 31 in 2001 to 21 as at the end of 2004, mainly due to failure to observe basic traffic rules and regulations, most of them occurring on good roads, Mr Opare-Asamoah added.

Mr Opare-Asamoah said the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service and the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) had been charged to strictly enforce the provisions of the Road Traffic Act, 2004 and relevant regulations and intensify their road safety programmes. He said they had been positioned to prosecute planned programmes to achieve the strategic goal of reducing accident fatality rate to a single digit by the year 2010.

Mr Opare-Asamoah said road transportation played a very important role in the socio-economic development of all nations saying that, it was the dominant mode of transport and accounted for 97 percent and 94 percent of national passenger and freight traffic respectively. It was in this recognition that government had invested massively in unprecedented road reconstruction and rehabilitation works on the entire road network over the past five years and that was an ample testimony to its commitment to make road transportation safe, reliable and efficient.

The Deputy Minister also expressed concern about issues that hampered free movement of people such as numerous check points, non harmonized ports and customs facilities and unfair and undocumented charges.

Mr Opare-Asamoah said as part of the ECOWAS protocols, all member countries were enjoined to facilitate free movement of people and goods within the corridor and one of the measures was the adoption of the Inter-State Road Transport (ISRT) regulations, which seek to harmonize, especially customs and other documentation procedures along the West African corridor.

Mr Opare-Asamoah said even though the prevalence of HIV in Ghana was low, the population living along the corridor of transit had a high exposure to the disease and needed to be protected through sustained education and sensitization for drivers, workers and passengers plying our road corridors.

He urged the Ghana Police Service, the Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) and the Ghana Immigration Service to work in such a manner that would facilitate the smooth movement of drivers on the national roads and frontiers.

Mr Emmanuel A Mensah, Co-ordinating Secretary of the Federation of Transport Unions of Ghana, said trade unions as social partners would need institutional support to ensure that there is adequate security to assist government and employers to address issues regarding the themes. He said there was also the need for a collaborative effort in ensuring that unorganized drivers benefit from sensitization programmes to bring sanity on the roads.

Mr Mensah urged the government to ratify International Labour Organization Convention Number 153 of 1979, which addresses the hours of work and rest periods for drivers.

He appealed to the Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine, the Noguchi Institute, other traditional Herbal research institutions, medical doctors and scientists to focus on HIV/AIDS eradication instead of concentrating on management of the dreadful disease. 4 Oct. 06