Pru MP calls for resignation of management, board of VLTC

The Member of Parliament for Pru East, Dr Kwabena Donkor, has called for the resignation of the management and board of the Volta Lake Transport Company (VLTC) for failing to ensure that vehicles which ply the lake meet safety standards.

He told the Daily Graphic that the VLTC ferry at Yeji, instead of having two engines, had one.

That engine, he said, was not an original one fitted by the manufacturers but a DAF 95 vehicle engine fixed by the engineers of the company.

That engine, he said, could break down anytime in the course of a journey, a situation which would lead to an accident and possibly drowning of passengers.

According to him, the manufacturers fitted two engines to the ferry to ensure that if one failed, the other could be used to prevent any accident.

Instead of procuring engines for the ferry, the VLTC, he said, was spending huge sums building car parks at its head office at Akosombo.

“I have reason to believe that the VLTC management does not value the lives of people living in reverine areas. 

“The ferry carries about 300 people and if there is an accident resulting from failure of this single engine on the ferry, you can imagine the number of lives that would be lost,” he said.

Dr Donkor stated that the VLTC had imported brand new marine engines but due to failure of the management to do due diligence, those engines were delivered without control panels.

As a result, he said, they could not be fitted and so had been in the warehouse of the VLTC for the past three years. 

“Water transport is one of the cheapest forms of transport and in every serious country, water transport is taken seriously. In the 1970s when we were growing up, there were four ferries at Yeji; three were plying the routes and one was on standby. Now there is only one and that one is not being maintained well by the VLTC, ” he said.

Dr Donkor accused the management of the VLTC of “ineptitude” and said a new board and management needed to be constituted to protect the lives of people in riverine areas who depended on  ferries as a means of transport.

He urged the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA) to inspect and certify all ferries in the country.