Last week, a planned decongestion exercise in Accra was thwarted by the Greater Accra Regional Youth Organiser, Moses Abor.
Indeed, he spoke about the issue when contacted by an Accra-based radio station during which he did not deny authorship of a statement he issued ordering, as it were, the stoppage of the exercise. The picture, as presented, was not pleasing because it contained an element of rabble-rousing.
We learnt about the massing up of personnel of the recently established City Response Team (CRT) at their headquarters situated at Asylum Down, Accra, following the development to protest the crude intervention.
We recall the training of personnel of the CRT by the military which received the backing of residents of the city. They considered it as an effective response to the environmental challenges facing the city.
Enforcement of bylaws and ensuring that residents clean the frontages of their residences and shops is demanding.
We also remember the efforts the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, in explaining the CRT concept to the residents of the Greater Accra Region.
Just when the CRT is about to embark upon one of their core mandates, we learn about how they have been virtually stopped from doing so.
The Greater Accra Regional Youth Organiser’s approach to the subject under review does not augur well for an efficient management of a city, which unfortunately, has become synonymous with filth and vehicular indiscipline.
He might have his reasons for not being in agreement with the exercise but openly inciting those responsible for the roadside indiscipline against constituted authority, as represented by the regional minister, is not to way to go.
Openly expressing his angst for an exercise, part of a grand project to ensure sanitation and traffic discipline in the national capital the way he did, leaves much to be desired.
Appointees carrying out their mandates such as the regional minister is doing, should be spared actions which tend to erroneously present them as villains and others, lovers of the people.
To tag the CRT ‘aaba ei’ is a negativity and reminds residents about the NDC brutish way of dealing with hawkers which is unfortunate.
We are aware about how traffic indiscipline has led to fatal accidents in Accra. Who should be held responsible for such consequences?
Of course nobody wants to see market women and hawkers in general deprived of their daily bread especially at times of global economic challenges such as we are in now.
The economic cost of irresponsible behaviour is high and unless we factor this into such matters and stop playing to the gallery, we would be getting it all wrong.
We have only heard from the regional youth organiser, not the regional minister, who has obviously decided not to react in the open, which for us, is the best way to go.
The youth organiser’s innuendo-laden remarks on air, when he spoke, is not good. A higher authority should intervene in this matter.