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Ghanaians at the mercy of ‘trotro’ drivers: implications for national security.
Today I focus on the cabal of private entrepreneurs, who have seen a business opportunity in the government’s failure to offer efficient public transportation and have stepped in to milk the situation so dry.
There is time to discuss only one example. I will use the ‘Trotro’ operating on the Accra-Nsawam Route, a road I am familiar with because I have lived along that stretch for more than 30 years.
Transport fares are normally charged per a person’s destination using approved fares unless the driver is loading at a station for a major community, say Kumasi, and passengers who board the vehicle, irrespective of whether they will alight before the driver’s final destination pay the fare for the final destination.
This is not what is happening now. Drivers now charge per the various bus stops dotted along the road. Whereas a fare from Accra to Nsawam can be say Ghs 15, drivers now prefer to charge per all the bus stops from Accra to Nsawam separately so that if there are 10 bus stops from Accra to Nsawam and each stop is Ghs 5, they make commuters cough out Ghs 50 for the same trip.
Let me demonstrate this.
1. During peak hours of the day, the drivers suddenly show disinterest in working.
2. When they have waited for several passengers to be stranded, a driver suddenly pulls up in Accra at a place where passengers going to Nsawam are gathered.
3. He then announces that he is not going to Nsawam but to the immediate major stop which is Kwame Nkrumah Circle.
4. Immediately after the driver has taken this fare, he announces that he is extending the trip to the next major stop which is Kwame Nkrumah Circle to Achimota, those who wish to continue must pay another Ghs5.
5. Once the driver is done taking fares for Achimota from the same passengers, he announces that he is extending the trip to Ofankor Barrier and that those who wish to continue must pay another Ghs 5. They will do this piecemeal approach for all stops on the road to Nsawam from Accra, including Pokuasi, Amasaman, Satelite, Medie, etc.
What is even most harrowing about this situation is that the drivers still have the presence of mind to charge fares for the various stops that are higher than the approved rates. This is in addition to hiking their prices at arbitrary levels as often as the government announces a fuel price increase.
I have seen drivers who get upset that passengers are complaining about their thievery and decide to stop in the middle of the road where there is no bus stop and sack the passengers from their car, leaving them in the middle of the night and in their journey where they cannot get another car to continue their journey.
The mistreatment of passengers doesn’t end here. These drivers have hosted Ghanaian passengers to some of the most dehumanizing services in their cars. Some of these cars are used to cart dead bodies at certain times and other times barely cleaned and used for passenger services.
These vehicles look as if they have been kept so dirty and stinky for a purpose, not only do they smell from the body odours of the conductors of the vehicles but also left-over from sex escapades of the drivers and their attendants the night after work and litter from passengers who used the cars previous times.
These cars are not certified to be road worthy, they are not insured, do not have safety belts, or fire tenders and sometimes passengers stay in the car with smoke emitting from it the whole time. When the vehicles have broken down in the middle of the journeys and passengers are to receive a refund, the drivers’ mates sometimes disappear only to emerge again when the passengers have given up and found their way out because they were running late to their destinations.
The recklessness with which the drivers drive, failing to stop at approved bus terminals, and picking up passengers at the wrong spots have caused several deaths on our roads. It must be noted that most of these guys are not licensed to drive a public vehicle, but they do.
In all of those I have seen the frustration of passengers, some being of the most respected and educated members of our society. They come to their boiling point and spill over. This has led to some of the deadliest fights I have been privileged to have a ringside view of.
It is reported that a passenger who once protested fares was driven back to the station, where the driver and his assistant got help from their colleagues who beat the aged man to death.
But it is not only passengers who have been victims. I have also seen situations where drivers’ mates have had their mouths enhanced, faces puffed up, and teeth rearranged from punches offered generously by passengers who seem to frequent the gym or have had time with the security services.
As for the verbal assaults and emotional blackmail, nobody who patronises ‘trotro’ should be surprised by them. In most instances the vaginas of mothers are the point of massive mudslinging; “one minute bia na ‘womaame tw3’ nam mu”.
While I have spotlighted the criminal behaviour of these drivers, how can anyone ignore their concerns about the degraded state of the roads that have made them have to continuously service their cars and buy parts whose prices are continuously rising? You put contractors on that road who have been on site for almost a year and have by their work, made the traffic situation worse and have failed to offer any alternative routes or put in place measures to manage the traffic.
These concerns have been made worse by the lack of a government-run transport system and a poorly regulated private-run transport that has to contend with daily price hikes in fuel.
I don’t need a certificate in National Security to surmise that this situation has grave implications for national security. That is even if we are not interested in looking at the economic implication of keeping our workforce spending all their energies getting transport to and from work.
In the military regimes of Rawlings in 1979 and 81, we are told that the military intervention was justified because of ‘kalabule’. Those were the periods when people took advantage of the shortage of essential commodities and exploited Ghanaians. As trifle as this sounds to the Facebook generation, it led to coups in Ghana and ushered our parents into the longest period of military intervention. People were shot over how much they priced the comedies they were selling. Just like how these drivers are issuing out fares with careless abandon. And you don’t need a sage to let you know that what these drivers are doing mimics what gave rise to those military interventions.
By Benjamin Akyena Brantuo.
He is an author, journalist, social worker, and communications consultant. kwakuakyenabrantuo@gmail.com
