It is said in every home there are Mensahs. On every road in some of the major metropolises in Ghana, there are trotros. Like Mensahs, trotros are viewed as troublemakers; almost always tethered to complaints, abuse and recklessness.
Like Mensahs, I sometimes feel trotros are misunderstood; deserving more tender loving care and regular interventions till they commit to a new leaf. Their drivers are tagged as reckless and their chasis sometimes are a step above revving bundles of tetanus with in-car sprinklers during the rainy season. Nonetheless, for a lot of Ghanaians, trotros are as essential as a warm cup of koko in the morning.
I won’t go as far as saying Ghanaians love trotros. They can be the most exhausting part of the day; for private car owners, for passengers and even for the cars’ drivers themselves. Perhaps the only individuals that derive the most satisfaction from trotros are their actual owners, who for the most part, lurk in the shadows; only emerging, hands outstretched, for their cuts from a day’s proceeds.
Trotros are undoubtedly the black sheep of Ghanaian transport (with okadas diligently challenging for that title belt). Transport in Ghana is a total mess; containing as much structure as you would find in a coop with chicken scampering after showers of maize.
The roads are terrible. The law isn’t enforced. And infrastructure has been overlapped by the vehicles seemingly multiplying by the month. Most importantly, as has been revealed by Citi FM’s ‘War Against Discipline’, the indiscipline and recklessness cut across all spheres of society. Even the police can make trotro drivers seem like saints on the roads some days.
The question then becomes: Do trotros get an unfairly bad rep and are they victims of a broken system? The answer to the question lies somewhere in the middle.
Banning trotros feels like the logical next step for some. Every five years, I sit in a trotro that offers shocking amounts of comfort. But for the most part, trotros, some of which have plied roads in three different decades, are not fit for transporting humans.
Trotros have a generally good track record when it comes to safety but are misunderstood by some to be metal coffins running on fuel.
Data over the years shows that minibuses (of which trotros fall under) are significantly safer than salon cars within cities.
When it comes down to the numbers and the people’s perception on the ground, Professor Albert Abane’s 2011 research on travel behavior in Ghana noted that the most frequently used modes of transport in all the metropolitan areas were trotros, with 71.4 percent.
Of this slice of the population, only 4.5 percent of commuters considered safety a concern with trotro transport, and justifiably so. In 2019, out of the 4,296 road crashes in Accra, only 547 involved commercial minibuses, according to the Motor Traffic and Transport Department figures.
But the idea of an accident-free trotro ride does not really translate to a better frame of mind of a passenger. Professor Abane’s research cuts to the core of why trotros are not fit for human use as the elements with the most physiological importance to the comfort of passengers have to do with quality; noise, vibration, ventilation, glare, odour and seating arrangements. Nine out of every 10 trotros fail this test given how cramped, brittle and hazardous some of the trotros are.
The most effective way to get rid of trotros would be to provide alternatives via a better bus intracity bus system and a functioning rail system. At the very least, if we could phase out trotros first from the central business districts, it would be a first step in restoring dignity to the way Ghanaians travel.
With all forms of change, my primary concern is the people; the drivers and mates who are stuck between a rock and hard place and truly deserving of some sympathy. They never take the talk of banning trotros kindly because, for some of them, it’s all they have.
It’s even harder for those who have to deal with insane levels of exploitation just to put some food on the table. It is because of these human interest angles that I feel regulation is our best bet in the short to medium term.
It also bothers me that the discourse having to do with the regulation or banning of trotros in our cities ignores actual car owners (people who own the trotros); it’s the sentiment shared by Ebenezer Arhin, the Vice GPRTU chairman of Obra Spot station the first time I met him two years ago in his musty container office.
Car owners seemed to be the source of frustration for some drivers. Their passive influence was the main change in the transport scene at the turn of the century, Mr. Arhin opined, as he reflected on how a trade he had been involved in over the last three decades had evolved over the years.
It’s the Wild West and anybody with the means can buy a van, poorly retrofit them into human ‘sardine cans’ and then find a driver who proceeds to fly the “overworked and underpaid” flag.
David (not his real name), a trotro driver who was on the Citi Breakfast Show back in August 2019, amplified the struggles of some drivers, who live hand to mouth despite providing a flawed but essential service.
David was an outlier, more candid than drivers I have spoken to recently. Like most Ghanaians, the drivers said they were managing; happy with the prospect of working for a car owner who they viewed as, for all intents and purposes, benevolent.
But David painted a picture I believe is closest to the truth. He wakes up at 4 am to work the Accra to Mallam route till after 10 pm. He makes at least seven trips daily in his retrofitted Toyota minibus. As at the time he spoke, he was expected to give his boss GHs130 a day aside from expenditure on fuel and sometimes maintenance costs.
On top of all this, he has to deal with our model police service. “They have been taking money unnecessarily from us [making our work more difficult],” David complained.
The hours may be long but because of the proliferation of vehicles operating as trotros, the drivers have more downtime than they would probably like. Yes, we have come a long way from the days where people were the ones doing the queuing at trotro stations. Now the trotros do the queuing.
This is a source of concern for Mr. Arhin. Drivers can no longer make as much as they used to because a Ghanaian yuppie may decide to go for a loan and buy a minibus to assume car owner status.
As has been the fashion in recent times, Mr. Arhin laid some blame at the banks, saying they roped in some car owners and, by extension, drivers into quite difficult loan agreements.
“For the past five to 10 years now, the banking system has polluted this place… and the guys, they can’t pay. The drivers [on work and pay agreements] can’t pay.”
Mr. Arhin did things the hard way. After driving a trotro for almost two decades, he said he has now worked his way to owning three trotros.
As a driver, he dealt with three car owners who he says were good to him. “Because of my hard work, whatever I needed in terms of maintenance or anything, they did it for me.”
Now on the other side of the driver-owner divide, he shows a reasonable amount of empathy and covers maintenance costs of his drivers’ vehicles among other things.
But my conversation with him took a turn. When I expected him to vouch for his colleagues. He was quite frank in his criticisms of drivers who undermine their trade and the already low standards.
For example, there are drivers who connive behind the union’s back to offer shallow promises to car owners. The union, in what could be considered a flaw, doesn’t take much interest in the minutia of the car owners and their vehicles. It is a drivers’ union, after all, Mr. Arhin reminded.
The union negotiates expected daily sale rates with the car owners and looks for reasonable outcomes for their drivers. But some car owners ignore the standard rates for drivers in favour of back door deals with desperate drivers willing to work for cheap and offer more sales.
There are even instances where he said car owners jettisoned union drivers when they got another driver more willing to break their backs. The drivers are in it for the money, after all.
Then there are drivers who run down decent vehicles by stripping it for parts to sell in favour of an inferior replacement. The car owners only surface when they realise their drivers are mismanaging their investments.
Ultimately, the trotro veteran was incredibly self-aware and found no difficulty in admitting that trotros had lost the perception war.”The name [of trotros] has already been painted black. The black has affected all the good ones inside.”
The traces of sympathy he has left are admirable but when does concern for drivers end in favour of customers, and vice versa? This is a question that typifies the dysfunction of Ghanaian society. It’s a shame that there is no one invested in ensuring anyone wins. At this rate, chances are my kids will ride in the very trotros I rode, in the past decade.