Politicians have been asked to stop intimidating Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service when they were arrested for flouting road traffic regulations.
The Director-General of the MTTD Commissioner of Police (COP), Francis Ebenezer Doku, alleged that Members of Parliament (MPs) and some key politicians often intimidated and threatened MTTD personnel with dismissals or transfers.
He made the claim when speaking to journalists during a visit to some major roads by members of the Bloomberg Philanthropies for Global Road Safety initiative yesterday in Accra.
COP Doku said overspending, wrong overtaking, use of mobile phones and drunk driving were the major traffic offences in the country.
He said road crash-related deaths reduced by 20.1 per cent in 2022, as compared to 2021, and 2020.
The MTTD boss said road crash injuries in 2022 declined by 1.5 per cent, compared to 2021 with 15,935 injury cases and 2020, which recorded 15,988 injuries.
COP Doku said the decline in the statistics was encouraging, but his outfit was working effortlessly to ensure that the figure was reduced to the lowest minimum.
COP Doku, however, asked stakeholders to play their roles diligently by encouraging the police to arrest offenders irrespective of their titles.
The leader of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety, Mrs Kelly Larson, noted that some of the world’s roads lacked important safety regulations that could help prevent traffic injuries and deaths.
She said in order to make our road safe, her outfit focused on improving road safety laws in 15 countries and implementing evidence-based interventions in 27 cities.
COP Doku said that to prevent road crash injuries and fatalities, the initiative had collaborated with Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to save lives through proven interventions that focus on four major risk factors; speeding, drink driving, helmet and seatbelt wearing/ child restraint.
She said speeding as the focal risk factor should be tackled extensively across all member cities around the world under the initiative.
The visit to the major roads was part of a three-day workshop organised by Bloomberg to beneficiary countries to ascertain safety measures instituted on our roads.
They visited the London Market Street in James Town and the Korle Gonno High road earmarked as some of the hotspots in the capital.
BY BERNARD BENGHAN AND SONNY SEYRAM QUARTEY
