GPHA acquires disability friendly buses for workers
The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) has acquired three new disability friendly buses to augment its fleet of vehicles.
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Each of the 40-seater capacity buses, apart from having facilities to accommodate pregnant women and obese people, can also accommodate an additional 30 people.
The buses also come with facilities which allow people to easily board using wheelchairs, as well as specialised seatbelts which allow wheelchair users to easily strap themselves in their chairs while aboard the vehicle.
The acquisition of the buses, according to the Port Mechanical Engineer at GPHA, Mr Stephen Owiah, was a demonstration of the authority’s commitment to the welfare of its employees who are physically challenged.
Physically challenged
He told the Daily Graphic in an interview in Tema last Saturday that physically challenged persons working with the GPHA had in the past struggled to get to work owing to the lack of appropriate means of transport.
He said the GPHA took a cue from the government’s Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) project which had made provision for physically challenged persons to easily get access to transportation in the major cities, and saw the need to replicate the idea to provide a respite for such employees who did not have their own means of transport to work.
“Until the introduction of these buses, the GPHA has had to do a special arrangement for its physically challenged employees who use the government disability friendly BRT buses to get to work,” Mr Owiah said.
Other facilities
Mr Owiah further explained that each of the three buses had six exits to enable passengers to escape in case of an emergency.
Similarly, he said the buses also came with colour codes which restricted people from sitting at places designated for physically challenged and obese people.
“We have sections which have been coded in grey and yellow colour codes to suit physically challenged, pregnant and obese people respectively,” Mr Owiah stated.
On the maintenance of the buses, Mr Owiah stressed that the GPHA had in place a high culture of maintenance to ensure that its machinery were maintained.
He was hopeful that the GPHA would in the not-too-distant future allocate a bus to each of its designated transport routes for its workers on the Accra, Tema and Kasoa routes.
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