USE THE CREATIVE APPROACH IN THE “DECONGESTION” OF URBAN GHANA!

Nothing shows the awfulness of our educational system more than when we are faced with national problems that require creative solutions that can’t be found in textbooks. Sadly, it does appear that original thinking is certainly not one of the great strengths of Ghanaians. The so-called “decongestion” of urban Ghana is a case in point. Over the years, certificates of urgency have been used by ruling parties to pass laws inimical to the national interest, but which benefit powerful and politically well-connected crooks, at the eleventh hour – just when Parliament is about to go on recess. The sale and purchase agreement for VALCO is a case in point. Why can’t our politicians use that mechanism to pass new legislation that makes it impossible for anyone to defy the orders of local authorities like the AMA, when they act to ensure that pavements are not used as markets?

It is typical of the parochial nature of our politics that it has not yet occurred to our political class to take a bipartisan approach – and act quickly to put together a relevant bill and use a certificate of urgency to get parliament to pass a new law, which will enable local government authorities such as the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA), to deal effectively once and for all, with those backward and lawless individuals, who think they can turn pavements designed and built at great cost to taxpayers (in order to protect pedestrians from vehicles – in a nation with one of the highest vehicular accident rates in the world), into the equivalent of street markets.

The time has come for our political class to unite, and get parliament to pass a new law that will require all hawkers and petty traders in Ghana, to be registered by their local authority before they can sell goods to the public, at designated areas specifically allotted them by their local authority – and to prescribe sanctions for those who break that law. It should be a requirement for their registration that they can only trade in approved and designated places, specifically assigned them by the local authority – such as the Hawkers Market near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. As things now stand, consumers who purchase the products of hawkers and petty traders, take an enormous risk, when they do so. Are those products safe for consumers for example – and have they been given official approval by the relevant state agencies, such as the Food and Drugs Board and the Ghana Standards Board, as being fit for sale to the public?

How does one know that one isn’t purchasing a contaminated product that has been rejected by other countries, and which have been smuggled by dishonest businesses into Ghana, for example, from a hawker or petty trader selling on a pavement in Accra? Do those hawkers and petty traders pay the correct amount of taxes to the authorities? Are the petty traders and hawkers carriers of infectious diseases, for example, which make them a danger to the public – and therefore unfit to be hawkers and petty traders, who sell food products to consumers? Why should hawkers and petty traders use pavements as markets to sell dangerous goods and unwholesome food? Should we allow “truck-pushers” to continue contaminating our environment by breaking up and disposing of computers, car batteries, compressors for fridges, rusty scrap metals, etc., etc. (all of which are toxic and dangerous to the health of the public), in public spaces such as city pavements?

All such concerns can be addressed and incorporated into any new law passed by parliament that requires hawkers and traders to be registered by local authorities before they can sell goods to the public. The recalcitrant ones who may want to defy their local authority and attempt to use pavements as markets after the passage of a such a law, can then be dealt with effectively by local authorities, which carry out ”decongestion” exercises in their areas of jurisdiction. It is time our political class started making laws to address issues of concern to society and which affect the quality of life of Ghanaians.

To help the police fight crime more effectively, for example, perhaps our politicians can also think of passing a law that makes it mandatory for all foreigners who intend to live here for more than three months to register with the police (in addition to registering with the immigration authorities) – and make it a requirement that they do not engage in crimes such as armed robbery and cyber-crime (known in local parlance as “Sakawa”), both of which ought to be made crimes that carry mandatory jail sentences of not less than twenty five years with hard labour. Our political class must learn to be more creative in using the law to help solve society’s problems. Let them start with the passage of a new law to help local authorities prevent hawkers, petty traders, and “truck-pushers” from using city pavements as markets and scrap-metal exchanges – and be seen for once to be working in the national interest as opposed to their parochial interests. A word to the wise…