Mustapha Kamara Jnr & Jenneh Braima
The Sierra Leone Motor Drivers and General Transport Union has condemned the action of the Ministry of Transport and Aviation to ban all private and commercial right hand drive vehicles in the country.
Alpha Bah was speaking at a presser last week in Freetown following the ban on all right hand vehicles last year, which took effect at the beginning of this month.
He described the ministry's action as "selective", and said it was an "injustice and we are not satisfied with it".
Mr Bah pointed out that the ban appears to target only commercial and private right hand drive vehicles, "exempting all government vehicles and those owned by selective institutions".
"We are not challenging government policies or laws but we were not satisfied with the biased action taken against motor drivers, especially at this critical moment in the country," Bah said.
He revealed that the government's decision has left over five hundred drivers unemployed and vehicles unattended, adding that the decision has had a negative impact on the country's transport system.
Though some time was given to commercial vehicle owners to convert their vehicles from right hand to left hand drives, Bah accused the ministry of failing to make any provision for such vehicles to be converted.
"We don't have good mechanics in this country to convert cars ... the few cars that were converted from right to left hand drives were left with mechanical problems", he said.
The Drivers' Union President explained further that the government should have hired experts "for the conversion all 513 vehicles that have been left useless after conversion".
He described the ban as "untimely", noting that the action was taken at a moment when the country is experiencing the worse Ebola outbreak in the world. Bah believes the ban may lead to an increase in new infections of Ebola in the country as people were now overcrowding at lorry parks and bus stops "to access the few commercial vehicles available at the moment'.
"Go to Regent Street in the evenings and see how people fight in queues to access transport to return home after working hours," he said.
He then pleaded with the government to "lift the ban and endeavour to bring in experts that would professionally convert all right hand vehicles in the country so that unemployed drivers can have a job again".
However, Public Relations Officer at Sierra Leone Roads Safety Authority, Karim Dumbuya, told politico that the decision of the government was final because transport owners had initially been informed about the ban in early 2013, "before its implementation this
year".
© Politico 13/01/15
