Changing face of rural transport
Transportation in Tamale has undergone a drastic shift in the past four years since I relocated here from Accra. Transport has predominantly been private cars and motorbikes owned individually by residents of the city.
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The drastic shift has been with commercial transport. Taxis are available at the lorry stations to take people to their destinations, and as the Americans will say these are shared taxis.
Depending on which suburbs are the destinations, people have complained of the rickety nature of some of these taxis.
Buses head out to the other major towns around Tamale that are usually some hours away from the city centre such as Salaga and Nalerigu, and recently some of the more popular luxury bus companies are also into the business.
Evolving transport modes
Hitherto, minivans headed out to the more developed towns around Tamale. They were inadequate to convey goods from the surrounding towns to markets in Tamale. Market women found themselves stranded with their foodstuffs or the foodstuffs got to the market late.
In came the ‘motorking’ to the rescue. They went to some of these communities with bad roads to cart the farm produce to the market. Essentially, they were to carry produce but being the only available vehicles, the motorking served as passenger vehicles in addition to transporting their produce.
Against this background, there developed a new taxi system in Tamale which I have named Mahama Taxis which are motorbikes, but this time, they are tricycles that have compartments for seating passengers, modelled on the rickshaws of India.
Lawlessness
In Tamale, these tricycles are mostly not registered and thus uninsured, and don't have licensed drivers since most of them are ridden by young teenage boys who ride them like motorbikes at the peril of other road users.
By law any commercial vehicle is to be operated by a person of sound mind not less than 25 years old and should at least have a driver’s licence A which is not usually the case with these vehicles and their riders.
What surprises me most is the large patronage, especially by market women, to move from one place to the other even within the metropolis. The Mahama Taxi,even with its size loads five persons like any other four wheeled taxi and I keep wondering if patronage is based on it being very new or that it costs mostly 10p or 20p less than getting a regular cab.
In a bid to make more money some of the drivers overload the tricycle and by virtue of its size, it is likely to topple over if the weight of the passengers should tip to one side.
The Mahama Taxi is the latest mode of transport in Tamale and with the patronage it is getting, it is very obvious that it has come to stay.
I pray that the necessary laws for ensuring the safety of passengers who patronise it are enforced.