By Laudia Sawer
Tema, June 02, GNA-The Chamber for Local Governance (ChaloG) has urged the National Road Safety Authority (NSRA) to decentralise its operations nationwide to enable it to be part of the works of the Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
The ChaLoG, in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), stated that, “ChaLoG therefore calls on the Board and Management of the NRSA to, as a matter of urgency, consider decentralising its operation by devolution so that their staff can become a part and parcel of the MMDAs to give full effect to the successful implementation of Act 993 with the total involvement and cooperation of the MMDAs.”
The statement, signed by the ChaLoG president and executive secretary, Dr Richard Fiadomor, and Mr Romeo Elikplim Akahoho, respectively, indicated that it had come to their notice that the NRSA had cautioned the MMDAs in Greater Accra to remove unauthorised billboards from road medians by Monday, June 02, 2025, or risk being hauled before court.
According to the chamber, it is very much aware of the mandate granted to the authority by the National Road Safety Authority Act, 2019 (Act 993), specifically to “combine education on, and enforcement of, rules of Ghana’s roads to prevent accidents and their resulting injuries and deaths.”
It brought to the attention of the NRSA Sections 91 to 107 of the Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936), which granted powers to the MMDAs to issue permits for all physical developments, including the erection of billboards.
“Therefore, if the NRSA feels very strongly that the erection of billboards, especially in road medians, is illegal, then the way to go is certainly not the issuance of warnings and threats of legal actions, particularly so when the MMDAs are also duly exercising the powers conferred on them by an Act of Parliament (Act 936).”
GNA
Edited by Linda Asante Agyei