The Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Coastal Development Authority, Kofi Karikari Bonzie, has said government’s Coda Drive Initiative being implemented in the southern parts of Ghana is meant to phase out “Okada” business.
According to him on Angel FM’s Anopa Bofoↄ show hosted on Tuesday March 1, 2022, “It is very very risk to ride Okada for commercial purposes” for which reason the business is “not meaningful”.
He noted there have been countless carnages on the roads involving motorbikes which have resulted in many losses including lives and properties, hence the introduction of the Coda Drive Initiative was expedient in reducing the risks.
“Motor riders are often knocked down by cars and they [riders] too knock pedestrians down. So we contrived what the Coda Drive Initiative can do to take the okada riders from the back of the motorbikes into the comfort of these vehicles” Mr. Karikari told Kofi Adoma Nwanwani, host of the show.
“We are not destroying the business [Okada], but we are giving them a meaningful job”, he added.
The Coastal Development Authority boss who doubles as Deputy CEO of Coda Drive Initiative in charge of Finance, Administration and Human Resource, also intimated that the move has the potential to “reverse migration” after observing activities among the pioneers.
It has been reported by the Ghana Statistical Service that Greater Accra is the densest region in the country with a population of 5,446,237. The development caused worry to some sections of the public who called on policy makers to consider redirecting resources to other regions for development and in part depopulate Accra.
In that light, Mr. Karikari noted that many of the interested persons who enrolled on the scheme on its introduction were northerners who travelled down south to seize the opportunity, yet did not remain in the region due to the high competition.
“They came all the way from Bawku Tamale and all those places to do this and they came for them…After two weeks of working, they observed that the traffic here was huge so at the end of the day the sales was small. They packed their luggage and moved back to their hometowns. They make at least GH₵120 per day there…
“So what we didn’t expect in this Coda Initiative was the reversed migration in a minimal way, but imagine we have a lot of this and we give to them we can reverse migration [make people move from the south to the north]” he said.
Though the initiative is meant for the coastal belt, Mr. Karikari iterated that it is not limited to the natives of the various regions of the south but “everybody that lives within our coastal development zone qualifies as far as he or she is a Ghanaian”.
