Commuters stranded on Agona-Takoradi road after rainfall, vehicles in gridlock

Scores of commuters were on Tuesday morning stranded on the Ewusiejoe section of the Agona-Takoradi highway in the Ahanta West municipality of the Western Region due to heavy rains that rendered the road impassable.

The situation, caused by early morning rains, which began at about 7 AM, rendered the road impassable about three hundred meters from the Ewusiejoe end through Wayoe Engineering to Halliburton Ghana end towards Takoradi.

At about 9.38 AM, stranded passengers were forced to alight and wade through muddy and slippery surfaces, to join vehicles and continue their journey to their destinations.

However, cross-country vehicles could surmount the soggy and slippery road to safety, leaving in their wake long queues of vehicles stuck in the middle of the journey.

Nana Ekow, who was stranded on the road, recounted that the situation at the Ewusiejoe section of the Agona-Takoradi highway, starting from the bridge through to Wayoe Engineering, had been a harrowing experience.

He explained that road engineers, over the weekend, filled the road with laterite, but unfortunately, the situation became worse after the Tuesday morning rains, causing inconveniences to commuters.

“We need a permanent solution to these perennial challenges of travelling on this section of the Agona-Takoradi highway. This road hauls huge tonnes of logistics, including fuel and gas products, to the mining enclaves in Tarkwa and beyond.

“It is a major artery transporting foodstuffs, cocoa, bauxite, and timber to the port of Takoradi and other areas. This is also part of the Trans-African highway project which traverses Cote d’Ivoire and other west African countries including Togo and Nigeria,” Ekow stressed.

Maxwell Ngisah, another commuter, also narrated to the Ghanaian Times how the Agona-Takoradi highway had recently experienced breakdowns of vehicles, especially heavy and long vehicles, which sometimes blocked the road to inconvenience other users.

He noted that there were also no warning signs to alert other users ahead, adding, “these occur in curves and it is dangerous.”

“The road engineers filled the road with laterites and boulders, but the rains have exposed the old potholes and rendered the road bad, slippery and impassable, too bad,” Ngisah lamented.