NRSC to check substandard tyres
The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) will, in September, this year, start implementing road traffic regulations which include the elimination of sub-standard tyres in the transport industry.
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The Executive Director of the NRSC, Mrs May Obiri Yeboah, who announced this in Kumasi at a meeting with the Ashanti Regional branch of the Second-hand Tyre Dealers Association, said the exercise sought to bring sanity into the transport industry by reducing road carnage.
She said the NRSC was not against the use of used tyres but the law sought to place a ban on sub-standard tyres and asked members of the association to get the message right and also to educate others for a successful implementation of the law.
The National Director of Planning and Programmes at the NRSC, Mr David Osarfo Adonteng, said tyres had a maximum life span of six years and that it was necessary to do away with sub-standard tyres in the transport system, as was the case in many developing and developed countries.
He corrected the impression created in media circles that the law sought to put a ban on used tyres, saying that the law was silent on new or second-hand tyres but banned sub-standard tyres.
The Ashanti Regional Director of the NRSC, Mr Thomas Bismark Boakye, who had earlier taken members of the association through a series of presentations on standard tyres, advised them to check the tyre manufacturing date for the week and year in which the tyre was manufactured.
Mr Boakye said the NRSC was operating under the Ministry of Transport and that everything the NRSC did was being monitored by the Department of Roads at the United Nations (UN).
The Ashanti Regional branch of the Second-hand Tyre Dealers Association appealed to the NRSC to suspend the implementation of the law for now.
Mr William Sarpong, a Kumasi-based tyre importer and spokesperson of the association, said the implementation date had come to them as a big surprise and that the suspension of the implementation date would allow them to carry out enough education and fully prepare for the exercise.
Earlier, members of the association had blamed the NRSC for not consulting them before preparing the bill and that they only got to know that the bill had been passed into law recently.
By Joseph Kyei-Boateng/Daily Graphic/Ghana