The traffic lights located at the UPSA junction in Accra as the road joins the main Legon/Dodowa highway have not worked for many months. Many others are in a similar situation, and surprisingly there appears to be no effort at reversing the situation.
For those joining the major highway from the UPSA end, especially in the evening, are confronted with a risk. They could possibly be rammed into as it happens occasionally, by oncoming speeding vehicles. As pointed out in a preceding paragraph, there are others in Accra posting similar features.
Besides this near permanent non-functioning of some traffic lights, others sometimes go off only to come on later, with nobody trying to intervene. Before then, however, many motorists would have had to pay dearly for daring to drive through without the support of a traffic cop.
Little wonder the hawkers around Shiashie in Accra find it more lucrative using tree branches to direct traffic when the lights go off at the intersection. It is the road here which stretches to the UPSA junction, the permanently non-functioning traffic lights.
The streetlights leading to the UPSA have not been working for sometime now, as are others elsewhere.
The bottom line of the foregone is that the authorities charged with managing such facilities must fashion out a means of addressing some of these little yet critical shortcomings. When such situations persist, the undeniable impression is that somebody being paid to discharge a particular function is not living up to expectation.
The nation’s capital should not be managed this way, and this is why we are devoting this space to this subject.
We are constrained to point out that somebody somewhere is not doing their work well, and these persons should tell us what is happening.
In a country where ‘dumsor’ is no longer one of our headaches, there is no reason why some traffic and street lights should not work for close to a year in especially the nation’s capital.
The President recently commissioned another batch of motorcycles for the Ghana Police Service.
Some of these motorbikes can be used for traffic patrols; this way when cops identify non-functioning traffic lights they would move quickly to the locations for the appropriate intervention.
There should also be a way of communicating with the appropriate quarters about non-functioning traffic lights and locations where gridlocks occur and, therefore, require police intervention.
This is how modern societies work, and we expect to see changes in that direction soonest.
Six decades after independence is such a long period. We should quickly put this antiquated way of doing things behind us. Yes we can and now.