Two sue Metro Mass over rebranded buses

A public  servant, Mr Kwabena Osei, and the Road Safety Advocates Ghana (RoSAG) have filed a motion at the Human Rights High Court asking the court to make an order for the removal of all tinted materials applied to the windows of the rebranded Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) vehicles.

Defendants in the suit are the Metro Mass Transit Limited (MMT), the Ministry of Transport and the Attorney-General.

An affidavit in support of the motion said the MMT recently caused a fleet of its buses to be rebranded with portraits of the current President and former Presidents and extended the exercise to cover the side glasses or windows of the buses in clear contravention of the law.

Clear and present danger

They are therefore praying the court for an order for the tinted material applied to the windows to be removed because it poses “clear and present danger to the lives and safety and comfort of the passengers.”

They are also asking for an order to restrain the MMT, its drivers, workers, agents, assigns and privies from further putting the rebranded buses on the roads until the anomaly has been rectified.

The plaintiffs averred that they drew the attention of the MMT to the anomaly and urged them to address it but that was ignored.

They also quoted Regulation 67 Sub-section 4 of the Road Traffic Regulations Act of 2012 which states that “a person may drive a motor vehicle which has glass other than the windscreen and front glass tinted with light transmittance of at least seventy per cent to allow the occupants to see and be seen if the film of tinting material applied to the windscreen or window or partition is free from bubbles or tears or scratches or, the film or material applied to the windscreen or window has a textured surface or is a fixture or an attachment but does not reduce the visibility of the person driving the motor vehicles in any direction.”

It is the contention of the plaintiffs that the portions covered by the rebranding prevent passengers and drivers of the buses from seeing and be seen in contravention of the law.

Bus rebranding saga

There was public uproar when news broke in December last year that 116 public buses had been rebranded at a cost of GH¢3.6 million.

The buses were rebranded with the images of the country’s past Presidents and the current President.