Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday called on the Judiciary to review road traffic laws to empower the law enforcement agencies to mete out stiffer punishments to road offenders.
“The current carnage on our roads is unacceptable and there is the need to put a stop to it by imposing severer punitive measures on careless drivers to serve as a deterrent to others.”
Vice President Mahama made the call when he broke the grounds for the rehabilitation of the 60-Kilometre Assin Praso-Asante Bekwai road linking the Central and Ashanti Regions and commencement of work on the Pra river bridge.
The road and Pra bridge which would be constructed with a $100 million Japanese grant, is scheduled to be completed in 2013.
He said the completion of the road would facilitate the haulage of cash crops and foodstuff from the two regions to marketing centres and also reduce the number of hours on the road.
The Vice President attributed most of the current road accidents to overspeeding and carelessness on the part of some drivers, adding ‘there have been a lot of educational programmes and yet they are not complying and I believe if the laws are reviewed to punish them, they will become more careful.’
Vice President Mahama said the ‘action year’ activities would be centred around the provision of roads, health and educational facilities, electrification and agricultural programmes and called on beneficiaries of such programmes to support government to implement them.
He said government under the ‘action year’ programme, would connect a lot of communities to the national electrification grid to scale above the current national average percentage of 57.
Mr Joe Gidisu, Minister for Roads and Highways, said government would this year construct and rehabilitate more feeder roads in all the regions.
He particularly mentioned the construction of Sawla-Fulfulso, Tumu-Han and Yamoransa Awiankwanta roads as some of those to be given priority this year and called on all stakeholders to give government the necessary corporation to execute those projects.
Mr. Keiichi Katakami, Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, said Japan would continue to support Ghana to make the people more comfortable.
He called on people living along the road to cooperate with the contractors to execute and complete the job on schedule.