Contempt on the Streets

Madness on the Streets of Adum, the CBD of Kumasi 7/4/2017 

Last week, the Delta Force of the ruling New Patriotic Party committed yet another unthinkable, despicable act. A judge had ruled to put thirteen of their members on remand for unlawfully attacking and forcibly removing a newly appointed Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator from his office. The group defied the judge's orders right in her presence, inside the court room and set all thirteen people free. I thought of it as a jail break. Disrespect for law and lawful institutions due to a political mentality of 'our time has come'. Well, the Regional Police Commander came out to apologize. The Police had downplayed the threat the Delta Force posed. Responsibility was accepted for the blip in security intelligence. 

In Parliament, a theater of degradation of trust was staged. The member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga, was forced to apologize for his inability to produce credible evidence  that he had received a cash bribe from another member of Parliament. Does Parliament pay or receive bribe? Public evidence is lacking for whatever view may have on the matter. 

However, on the streets of Adum, the Central Business District of Kumasi, evidence that traffic congestion is worsening and that the existing traffic management strategy has failed is not lacking. Anyone who drives, walks or trade on the streets will give you proof that the paid parking regime in Adum is not killing traffic congestion. Rather it is giving birth to triplets of traffic congestion. Right in Adum, the Central Business District of Kumasi, people, vehicles, businesses, Trotro and Taxis fight for space right in the middle of streets, in presence of city authorities. Yet city authorities look on helpless. Traffic congestion has gone from bad to worse. 

In 2006, a private real estate company, Goldstreet, was awarded a contract to control and manage the growing traffic congestion in Adum. About 54 of the already narrow streets in Adum were then converted into parking lots with the hope to ease traffic and at the same time make money. More than ten years down the paid parking lane, there is no need for a scientific research to provide the kind of evidence our Parliament failed to get to proof bribery in the house that, the traffic congestion situation in Adum is deteriorating. Well if you still need such a proof there are, in fact, numerous of them. I cite just one. In 2014, Dr. Adams of the Civil Engineering Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and two colleagues of his, investigated the traffic situation in Adum. Guess their finding. Drivers "...park for comparatively longer periods after the introduction of the parking scheme." 

So the paid parking scheme in Adum is bearing more traffic than it is killing. In front of Prudential Plaza (former Unicorn House), for example, a narrow street meant for two vehicles is now a Lorry Station for Taxis and Trotro vehicles picking up and dropping off passengers. Unless their vehicles are full of passengers, they parking on the streets. In the process, a long queue of Trotro and Taxis are formed blocking every inch of space in their path. Another portion of the street is used as paid parking lotsby Goldstreet for which a fee of one cedi is charge per hour. So a vehicle may park on the streets for as long as the owner is willing to pay the parking fee. In the end, barely one lane  is left for vehicles coming from both ends of the street to bypass each other without hitting wares of hawkers or knocking down pedestrians walking right in the middle of the street. 

I see Police Officers, Metropolitan Task Force staff and Road Traffic Management Officers in their smart dresses in Adum everyday. I also see what I call traffic wardens of the Goldstreet Real Estate Consult collecting parking tolls. Unfortunately, I do not feel the presence of their efforts on the street of Adum. The traffic congestion is swallowing all efforts. If this is not lawlessness too the core then I do not know how to describe it than that it is complete anarchy. If the Delta Force court room action is an attack on democracy then the traffic congestion situation in Adum is a retreat to anarchy. 

If we should consider hours lost in traffic, fuel bought with money burnt by vehicle engines for going no where in Adum and its effect on the climate and lost productivity. If we consider the inconvenience driving and walking in Adum and the effect on businesses then it is time to act. It is time for cities authorities paid by the taxpayer to look for suitable parking spaces away outside Adum. It is time to abolish paid parking in Adum and ban parking in Adum altogether unless a building has its own private parking. I believe this is one of the ways of solving the congestion including dealing with on-street hawking.

If our cities authorities cannot arrest those who break traffic regulations by hawking on the street or creating a Lorry Park in the middle of a street everyday, then they must set the Delta Force free because it is a daily epidemic that is akin to breaking a jail for a remand. After all, they are all law breakers.