Okada operation needs strict regulation
The Minister of Transport, Mr Joseph Bukari Nikpe, is reported to have disclosed that the government is ready to review the law that would legalise commercial motorcycle operation (Okada) in the first quarter this year.
If this is anything to go by, then since today is February 12, we have 47 days to go.
In other words, by March 31, which is the end of the first quarter of this year that review would have been done.
The Transport Minister say that the review, meant to regularise the loads business, is a campaign promise.
The Ghanaian Times has already commended President John Dramani Mahama for having hit the ground running by timely fulfilling some of his campaign promises, which means this one too would be done once mentioned.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the okada operation has come to stay in the country because of some benefits it has brought about. It has become a source of livelihood for a good number of young men.
If the guess of The Ghanaian Times is right that the Pragyia operation too is under the law to be reviewed, then some young women too would find jobs in the okada business.
Besides, the operation has been beneficial to many members of the public.
The motorcycles have become an easy source of transportation wherever they operate and the quickest way to get to certain destinations.
However, the motorcycle operators create a lot of nuisance on the road and the operators refuse to accept their faults, and even attempt to assault their victims.
These operators, including those who do courier services, use pavements and every available unapproved routes, which is of great concern.
All we are saying is to prompt the government to quickly engage the public to collate the ills associated with okada operation and incorporate them in the review to ensure sanity in the system.
And before the reviewed law comes into operation, the okada operators must be made to attend education workshops, where, among other things, the law related to their area of business would be explained to them.
Attendance at such meetings must be acknowledged and certificated as one of the criteria for operating okada.
If an operator is arrested for flouting the law and he has the workshop attendance certificate, his punishment must be different from the one who doesn’t have it, if he is not a new entrant into the operation and erring new entrants too must be treated differently.
That is to say, the government should find a way of getting all new entrants registered and educated in the law.
The Ghanaian Times believes its suggestions and whatever points the government already has in place would sanitise the Okada operations in the country.
