Northern Youth group commends National Road Safety Commission
The Northern Youth for Peace and Development (NYUPED), an umbrella of youth groups in development in the three northern regions, has commended the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) for granting permission to the three regions to use the auto rickshaw tricycles to alleviate the acute transportation shortage facing residents of the regions.
The NYUPED further appealed to the NRSC to carry out its decision to amend its laws on motorcycle usage in the country.
Auto rickshaw
The auto rickshaw tricycles were recently introduced into the country for carrying passengers in Ghana, especially in the three northern regions as a major means of transportation for commercial purposes.
The Executive Director of NYUPED, Mr Prince Hardi, said the amendment would allow the usage of the tricycles/motorcycles throughout the country since it was already having a widespread patronage by the ordinary Ghanaians in carrying out their daily economic activities.
Man’s conveniences
The NYUPED Executive Director expressed the fact that: “Laws are made for man’s conveniences’ sake and not man for the laws.”
He said there was a great need for motorcycles to be used across the country on commercial basis since they were already gaining a lot of patronage.
He assured the commission that his outfit would propagate the motorcycles’ suitability and safety as a commercial vehicle since most developing countries in West Africa were using them.
The executive director stated clearly that the auto-tricycles were being used as a safe means of transportation in many civilised countries in the world to facilitate major transportation in remote areas where conventional transporters were unable to reach.
He said the lack of properly constructed roads in the country made the use of the tricycles more appropriate in the country.
He added that no less a person than the President of the Republic of Ghana took a ride on a tricycle as an endorsement during his recent visit to Wa in the Upper West Region, where those auto-tricycles have been introduced.
Unemployed youth
Mr Hardi said as a means of transport, it has created immediate jobs for the unemployed youth especially in the three northern regions.
“We believe strongly that the President owes it as a duty of concern and obligation to ensure that he provides good policies to eliminate unemployment and alleviate poverty in the country in the transport sector,” Prince Hardi observed.
Prince Hardi said NYUPED, as a youth-based advocating organisation in the three northern regions, which has done so much work in the past to ensure the relative peace that those regions were presently enjoying, would be the first to caution against such acts that were likely to trigger confrontation and violence in the regions.
According to Prince Hardi, the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the supreme law of the land, provides in Chapter Five, Article 24 (1) under “Economic Rights” that, “Every person has the right to work under satisfactory and healthy conditions, without distinction of any kind”.
In line with the constitutional provisions, the executive director said: “Those were the days of monopoly in any economic venture or enterprise; they are forever gone in our present democratic political dispensation, so no person or group of persons shall claim monopoly in any field of economic endeavour, more so, when it is for the larger national interest.’’
Prince Hardi called on the GPRTU, NRSC, Ministry of Roads and Transport, Ghana Highway Authority, and related public-private transport entities, among others, to embrace the call to make the tricycles fully operational in the country.