• Tricycles using principal streets of Accra have been banned
• Community-based use of such tricycles is however to be encouraged
• These aboboyaa help convey waste in communities
While there has been a directive that effective November 1, 2021, no tricycle (popularly known as Aboboyaa) should use motorways in the region, early checks show that the directive doesn’t seem to have gone down to the persons involved yet.
On the Accra-Tema Motorway, it was observed that some tricycles carting garbage were still busily plying the route, competing with other vehicles for driving space, reports citinewsroom.com.
The report added that the tricycles were headed towards the Kpone landfill site.
“I didn’t hear any information from anybody saying we should not take the rubbish to Kpone,” one of the riders is reported to have said when confronted.
He added that they had to still use those routes because as of now, there are no other options for dumping sites.
“We don’t have a place to pass apart from the highway…if not here, where do we pass to go and dump the refuse,” he explained.
In the meantime, the Informal Waste Workers Union of Ghana, users of tricycle for waste collection, have protested against this decision by the government.
The group, showing their displeasure with the current ultimatum, gathered at the Awudome Cemetery this morning in protest.
They are also appealing to the government to provide waste compactor mobile trucks at vantage points within the region for them.
Lydia Bamfo, who is the union leader, said the ban is likely to render many of her members jobless especially when there are no alternate dumping sites established for them.
“We are pleading with the government to make a mini-transfer station for us, or they get us a compacter truck,” she said.
Henry Quartey announced at a press conference a week ago that the ban on aboboyaas plying motorways takes effect from November 1, 2021, with an extension until February 1, 2021, for them to restrict their operations only to their immediate communities, while completely avoiding the use of principal streets.
