Friday, February 5, 2010

MAN +TROTRO + INCREASE IN TOLLS=CHUKING FROM PASSENGERS

Happy New Year!!! Greetings from Swedru (The land of Sakawa)...Just Kidding, but they do send their greetings though.
I kinda have been in the dark for about two weeks ie. No TV (not entirely true), No radio…the only internet access is on my phone and trust me there’s no way you would be able to enjoy "Myjoyonline".
Anyway I hear the road tolls have been increased and as a result of that, I have an interesting story for you.


On account of fieldwork, (Zzzzzzzz) I have been with a research team in the Swedru area for about three weeks now and we’ve been working our way slowly down to Kasoa.
Anyway, yesterday I had to come to ‘beautiful’ Accra to attend a lecture on Insurance Law. So I took a troski from Kasoa to circle and they charged one cedi.


The explanation given to us passengers was that the reason for this was on account of the increase in tolls. Apparently the toll has been increased from 8gp to 1Ghc wow!!! That’s like 92gp extra if my math is correct.
Quick Questions?
1. Why the drastic increase in price?
2. Where or to whom is the money going?
3. Haven’t they learnt anything from Kuffuor’s mistakes?
4. Are they going to give us a break down of what the tolls collected would be used for?
5. Last but not the least, following Q4 How will they be audited?
So the whole story actually begins on my way back to the Kasoa area.
You see, after class I got a friend to drop me off at the Nkrumah Circle so I could board a Kasoa troski to join my workmates. Upon boarding the vehicle, I heard passengers complaining about the 1ghc the troski drivers are collecting from them. Some were even doing book long talk.
This went on and on for about 30mins after we had left the station. At one point the trotro driver even stopped half way to destination. I think he had plans on abandoning us there, don’t know what made him change his mind and continue the journey. So anyway we got to the Weija-Kasoa barrier and one of the passengers shouted to the police officers


"Officer Officer stop this car.

Officer Officer stop this car".

So the "Koti" stopped the car and asked what the problem was. One of the passengers sitting in front of the troski got down and narrated the whole story to the police officer (Senior most chuking). Kudos to the officer, I think that dude deserves an award big time. Can you believe he made the troski mate get down from the car, walk to the toll area to change money and give each passenger the amount of money they rightly deserved? Funny huh?!!!!! It was soo hilarious, you should have seen the face of the driver. True Kodak moment.
We thought the driver might not take us to our destination if we left the barrier so one of the passengers alerted the "Koti" if anything like that should happen we would write down his number plate and give it to him.
• Chuking(reporting)
• Troski/Trotro(commercial bus)
• Koti(Police Officer)
DATE OF INTENDED POST: 02/02/2010