Give private schools port duty waiver to acquire good buses – Government told

A journalist with Kumasi based first private radio station Otec, Nana Akwasi Acheampong well known in the media as Kanewu has called on Government and the education Ministry to support schools in the country especially private ones to get road worthy and durable school buses to ensure safety of children who resort to school buses to and from school.

There have been recent accidents involving school buses with has claimed lives and injured innocent school children.

Four school children were reported dead with scores of pupils injured in an accident involving a school bus on the Terchire-Adrobaa stretch in the Tano North district of the Bono Region.

The old Benz school car with registration number AW 6315-11 was transporting about 25 pupils of the DS Elite Academy when the car slid off the newly constructed Adrobaa road.

Even though the stretch on which the accident occurred has been described as an accident prone area, many attributed the incident to the bad state of the school’s bus.

Speaking on Otec fm’s afternoon social program dubbed Asem beba dabi as a resident panel member, the Sabin Akrofrom Baamuhene expressed worry about the bad state of some school buses which convey school children to and from their various homes. He told host of the programme Krobea Nana Yaw Asante that most private schools do not have the muscles to acquire new and road worthy buses due to their high cost and import duties of which they (school owners) cannot be solely blamed.

Nana Acheampong however appealed to the government, ministry of education and other educational stakeholders to give schools some port duty waiver to enable them import international standard school buses to ensure the safety of school children in Ghana.

“Krobea, let me tell you this, if government is to give schools some sort of duty waiver, I can say most of the schools will be able to buy good and new buses from outside and that alone can help clamp down the rate of school bus accidents” he said.

He however urged school owners to also be up and doing especially with the kind of drivers they employ to drive their school buses as they (drivers) also play a vital role in ensuring school children safety.

Source: Ghana/otecfmghana.com