Over 30 drivers arrested for unlawful parking in Accra
About 35 drivers have been arrested for unlawful parking and road obstruction at the Central Business District, Accra.
The drivers who include commercial and private ones are said to have parked at UTC, timber market along the Accra stretch on Monday August 9.
The Commanding Officer in Charge of the operations at the Accra MTTD ASP Richard Nyarko said the exercise is to rid the Central Business District of traffic caused mainly by indiscriminate parking by motorists.
“We targeted vehicles that have parked unlawfully at both sides, that is at the edges of the road. Cars were abandoned, some of them have converted the pedestrians side walks as well as part of the road to a permanent loading point, this is wrong and they will be dealt with according to the law,” he explained.
The offenders will be processed at the La District Magistrate Court.
On concerns raised by some of the drivers of paying parking tolls to AMA officials, ASP said “I don’t have any knowledge of the section being converted to parking space for drivers. As you and I are aware the road has been constructed by the Central Government and the MTTF is an agency that has been mandated by law to ensure that there is always an unimpeded flow of traffic for all motorists”.
The ongoing exercise is a joint operation between the Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).
What the law says;
A person who parks a motor vehicle wholly or partly on the verge or shoulder or a road, on any land situated between two carriageways and which is not a footway, on a pedestrian crossing, or on a place reserved for the physically challenged, commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding 250 penalty units or to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 12 months.
Road traffic fatalities seem to be rising as motorists continue to park unlawfully and engage in other road irregularities.
Road accident trend
A total of 1,454 fatalities were recorded for the first half of 2021, according to the MTTD and the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA).
622 motorcycle deaths were recorded from the 3,157 accidents recorded from January to June 2021.
2,481 persons were also injured from motorcycle accidents from the half-year report, which is more than the 1,768 injuries reported for private vehicles.
However, the number of injured victims through commercial vehicle crashes toppled that of motorcycles and private vehicles. Some 3,939 were injured in accidents involving commercial vehicles.
Data from the half-year report also shows that accident cases recorded among both commercial and private vehicles, as well as motorcycles, have all increased, compared to the figures recorded for the same period in 2020.
The number of motorcycle accidents saw a 23.76% rise from 2,551 in June last to 3,157 in June this year.
Commercial vehicles had 4,151 accidents in June 2020 but increased by 19.20% to 4,948 in June 2021.
Private vehicles equally recorded a rise in reported accidents from 4,430 in June 2020 to 5,868 in June 2021. This represents a percentage change of 32.46%, making it the highest among the three categories of accidents reported.