Road as a type of transport means, is
a path on land established for the movement of vehicles, humans and animals. Roads
offer a dependable route for the movement of goods and services from one place
to the other. For roads to effectively provide the functions described above, it
should be in good shape or in other words motorable. All over the world road in
the form of highways, motorways, trunk roads, arterial roads, feeder roads
among others is the most widely used means of transport. It would therefore not
be over the bar to describe road
transport as the leading means of transportation.
In Ghana, the importance of road
transport even assumes a higher tendency and indeed not quite different from
the general world spectacle. This higher importance of road transport in Ghana
is overly due to poor harnessing of the other means of transport such as rail,
water and air. However bad roads have become the bane of the country, subsequently
impeding the effective functions of roads as a means of transportation. Statistics
from the International Road Federation indicates that as at the year 2009, a
percentage of only 12.59 of the total network of 109,515km had been paved, where
paved roads are those roads surfaced with crushed stone, hydrocarbon binder or
bituminized agents etc.
A deplorable road in itself is a
recipe for vehicular accidents. It is not surprising that road accidents keep
increasing day in day out with its adverse effect on the lives of road users
and the country at large. According to World Health Organisation (WHO),
1.3million persons are killed and additional 30-50million are injured annually
in road traffic accidents. The worst part of these statistics from WHO is that
majority of the road crashes, that is over 85% occur in low and middle income
countries where over 81% of the world’s poor population live and own about 20%
of the world’s vehicles. Unfortunately most African countries and for that
matter Ghana is placed in this category.
In Ghana, it does not get any better
as statistics from the National Road Safety Commission indicates that between
1990 and 2010, a total of 200,678 crashes involving 311,075 vehicles were
recorded with 272,689 casualties. There is a little respite in 2010 as compared
to 2009 with a marginal reduction in crashes from 2009 figure of 12,299 to
11,506.Regional breakdown places the Greater, Ashanti and Eastern regions as the
worst accident prone regions with the 2010 statistics for these aforementioned
regions as 5122, 1944 and 1182 respectively.
Interestingly, rural areas where
agriculture is the thriving economic activity are the worst affected in terms
of bad roads. This has subsequently affected productivity in the agricultural sector
which is the largest sector in the Ghanaian economy employing some 60% of the
country’s total employed labour. Farming and for that matter agriculture
thrives on good transport system as most of the produce from agricultural activities
are bulky and hence requires vehicular transport on motorable roads to the
various marketing centers. However, the impassable roads coupled with
inadequate storage facilities in the farming areas leads to recurring losses in
earnings from agricultural sector culminating into low incomes, lower
productivity among a host of other rippling adverse effects.
In concluding this piece I would
appeal to the government of the day to endeavour to give facelift to the innumerable
deplorable roads in the country especially the Nsawam-Suhum-Apedwa stretch of
the Accra-Kumasi Highway, Nsawam-Adeiso, Suhum-Asamankese-Kade, Nkawkaw-Atibie
among others. These roads are highlighted largely because they are in the
domain of the writer not necessarily because they are the most important roads
that may need urgent attention.
