Fuel tanker runs over an eight-year-old boy at Ahwetieso in Tarkwa

An eight-year-old boy met his untimely death at Ahwetieso in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality after a fuel tanker knocked him down and ran over his head.

Joel Nana Baidoo, who is a pupil of Ideal College in Tarkwa was crossing the road to the other side when the tanker moving from Takoradi towards Tarkwa knocked him down on Tuesday morning.

Cars have been knocking people down all the time at Ahwetieso and this has become a concern for the citizens in the community who have expressed their displeasure on the recurrent incident.

This accident angered youth of the community who blocked the road to prevent cars from moving. This caused huge vehicular traffic on the road which took the intervention of the Tarkwa Police Commander for a free flow of traffic.

Some community members who spoke to GhanaWeb indicated that” we have called for speed rumps for so many years now, but nobody listened to us, and this boy has died just like that”, we shall find a way of doing our own speed rumps, to prevent our children from dying.

This has made community members call for speed rumps on that stretch of road in the community to stop this menace.

Speaking to GhanaWeb in an interview, Assembly Member for the Area Hon Fuseini Rashid Amadu noted that this is not the first time this is happening, adding that “two months ago, another person was knocked down in the Ahwetieso school, hence the agitations by the youth for speed rumps”.

He said he reported the intention of the youth to create their own speed rumps to the assembly where he was assured that the assembly will find a temporal measure to reduce speed on the road.
He added that the assembly has decided to put ropes on the road as temporal speed rumps while they wait for a discussion with the Ghana High Way Authority on a permanent solution to the problem.

The remains of the boy which was deposited at the morgue yesterday is expected to be buried today.

Meanwhile, the Municipal Chief Executive for Tarkwa Nsuaem, Hon Benjamin Kessie has visited the family to commiserate with them.