The headline for this commentary is a true reflection of what has been taking place on the lower notch of the multi-million dollar four-tier interchange.
Instead of savouring the only 4-tier interchange in the whole of the West African sub-region some of us have chosen to desecrate it in our own way as it were.
Why would some of us decide to turn a segment of this expensive project into a chop bar with customers queuing to buy fufu with cow leg light soup (nkrakra), omotuo and tilapia and banku? This disturbing phenomenon on the interchange just shows how some of us can be so irresponsible when it comes to management of public property.
The last time we published a commentary about the abuse of the Pokuase interchange immediate action was taken by the Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council. Indeed a rapid response team was dispatched to go and clear commercial commuters, trotro drivers stopping in the middle of the road to pick passengers and cassava sellers who had converted one of the lanes into ‘an interchange market’.
Even though the action was swift we were not convinced that it was going to be consistent. Now we have been exonerated with the emergence of flourishing chop bars on the interchange. Unless an effective action is taken we shall soon witness fitting workshops under the interchange.
We have learnt about how the food sellers decided to outwit the authorities by selling in the evenings.
If the food sellers can be pardoned for their irresponsibility we cannot do so for the customers who have found in the interchange an admirable place to buy food.
Without customers queuing up to patronize the fufu and light soup joint on the interchange the sellers would not be encouraged to sell at the place.
Perhaps the authorities should consider arresting the patrons as well as the sellers in order to discourage them from continuing to buy from such an anomalous location.
Besides being an eyesore and the creation of avoidable traffic logjams on the interchange lives would be put at risk when the crap is allowed to persist.
Failure to stop the abuse of the interchange would embolden the hawkers and commercial commuter drivers to continue to mess up the location in a manner consistent with a failed society.
The Greater Accra Regional Minister should consider an engineering intervention to make it impossible for the traders and commuters drivers to turn the interchange into a parking lot and a food joint. An engagement with such experts would lead to a permanent solution to the challenge we can bet.
Until such an engineering feat is attained the authorities should put a permanent structure such as guards from the municipal assembly supported by police officers to maintain order and decency on the interchange.
To turn such a beautiful edifice into a fufu and ‘nkrakra’ as well as omotuo joint is not only irresponsible but an affront to officialdom.
We hope that this will be the last time that we shall raise our voices against the abuse of the interchange.