A Motor Transport and Traffic Department (MTTD) Director of Education, Training and Research of the Ghana Police Service says enforcing the road traffic laws on pedestrians who jaywalk across the Tema motorway is impractical.

Supt Alexander Obeng on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Tuesday observed that the Tema-Accra corridor in its current state lacks some critical features such as footbridges which is to facilitate the commuting of residents living on either side of the motorway.

Ghana’s motorway laws bars pedestrians from crossing the busy highway. However, this rule is being flouted by people living in the area.

This has, therefore, raised concern amongst a section of Ghanaians particularly regular drivers on the stretch calling for the law to be enforced and the right to be practised.

But stressing that “enforcement of the law must be fair”, Supt Obeng questioned how settlers along the area are to go about their activities when the almost 56-year-old highway now lacks certain critical features to fit it current setting.

“Tell me, looking at the current state of motorway now, is it enforceable for people not to cross the highway? It is not enforceable because people are living on either sides and they are crossing.

“Look at the situation where trotros are stopping to alight passengers, those persons cannot say they will walk along that 18km without crossing. When you have not made provisions [to help them cross]. And so let us deal with the issue as it is [now],” he told host Winston Amoah.

The MTTD Researcher then advocated for a strategic reengineering of the motorway.

Citing the Accra-Adenta highway as a more improved highway where footbridges and speed cameras have been mounted at strategic points to protect pedestrians, Supt Obeng said such urbanisation must be replicated on the 1956 Tema motorway to make up the current inconsistencies.

On the same show, a transport consultant, Cecil Ebow Garbrah called for the laws to be enforced.

Indicating that “the motorway is destroyed and the beauty of it is gone”, Mr Garbrah stressed that an intensive sensitisation programme must be undertaken to educate road users, both drivers and pedestrians of the rules guarding the highway.