The towing yard of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) at Adum was on Monday thrown into a state of disorder when riders of ‘rickshaw’ tricycles, popularly known as Pragia, besieged the yard in an attempt to forcibly retrieve their impounded tricycles.
Numbering about three hundred, the irate Pragia riders blocked the main road in front of KMA and attempted to break into the transport yard, but they were prevented by the KMA City Guards and police officers who were on duty.
In the process, they attacked the Police Officers and City Guards by pelting them with stones and other objects, injuring eight police officers and destroying vehicles.
A distress call was placed to the military, who came and maintained law and order. Information available to this paper has it that twelve people have been arrested in connection with the incident.
Prior to this incident, the riders had blocked the busy Suame roundabout – Kejetia (Dubai) road, with concrete slabs and tricycles, subjecting road users to harassments until the police and military teams intervened.
When Ms. Henrietta Afia Konadu, the Public Relations Officer for the KMA was contacted, she confirmed the development to The Chronicle. She indicated that since June 2023, the assembly has schooled leaders of these Pragia riders about the exercise that seeks to restrict their movement into the Central Business District (CBD) to reduce congestion.
According to her, the restriction order was supposed to take off from July 24, 2023 but the riders failed to comply with it.
On Monday, August 7, 2023 Afia Konadu explained that whilst they were trying to enforce the restriction order in the morning, they discovered that some of the riders of Pragia had blocked the road from Suame roundabout to Race Course.
The assembly responded by sending police to clear them from the road and in the process impounded forty-three tricycles.
This development, she noted, gave the KMA a clue about how chaotic the exercise could be so they spoke to the police to mount checkpoints at the various entry points into the CBD.
PRO Konadu told The Chronicle that after they have been cleared from the road, the Pragia riders came to the Towing Yard of the assembly to forcibly take away their impounded tricycles. They did this by pelting the police and City guards with stones and injured some of the peace officers.
“I was part of the team that went to the CBD and we urged these riders to leave the area; anyone whose motor was seized was trying to resist our directive,” she said.
When asked to explain how the situation was brought under control, she disclosed that the military were called in to restore law and order.
Responding to a question as to whether there has been any arrest, she explained that the police managed to detain twelve people. During interrogation, they claimed they were not riders of Pragia but they were called to come and fight the assembly taskforce.
“We beg of them, we know that they are our brothers and during the preliminary stage, they pleaded with the assembly to review the restriction by allowing them to ride to Labour roundabout instead of Anloga junction, which we agreed. We are doing this to sanitise the city, which is for all of us,” she said.
Mr. Seidu Rauf, one of the leaders with the Pragia Workers Association of Ghana, also confirmed the development, describing it as unfortunate.
According to Rauf, having received a letter from the KMA concerning the restrictions of their movements, they pleaded with the assembly to review its decision because it will affect them economically, but they were ignored.
“The areas designated for us are highways and we cannot work on highways,” Seidu Rauf told The Chronicle in a telephone interview.
Asked if indeed some Pragia riders attacked the Police Officers, he responded in the affirmative, saying the police told them (riders) to remove their tricycles from the road after which they (police) will give them (tricycles) back to the riders.
He said when they complied with the order and removed the tricycles, which they had used to block the road, the police surprisingly took away all the seized tricycles to the KMA transport yard.
