In April last year, an investigative documentary in video and print was published about dealings with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA.) The state agency mandated primarily with issues relating to licensing of vehicles and the people who handle these vehicles.
The DVLA thus becomes a MAJOR (caps mine) stakeholder in the road safety gamut of our country. And it goes to give credence to the manner in which the documentary house linked deaths on our roads to corruption.
But as usual soon after the premiere of the film and subsequent airing many were those who expressed same age old reservation of “not long before things go back to what they were and even worse.”
At least these lamenters based their reservations on instances in the past where exposés have yielded hue and cry but more often gone cold and dry weeks after. Amongst other; the Tema habour story (Enemies of the Nation), the cocoa smuggling story (In the Interest of the State) and Power Thieves (The President’s Assignment)
The investigator has more often than not, striven to take his evidence to the courts in order to have the bad guys jailed. These cases drag on so long, the status quo would have been reestablished by the end of the case.
Making nonsense and a total mockery of the days and months spent in trying to get scapegoats. Simply put; the investigator’s efforts are deliberately flagged offside and play resumes as though nothing happened even in the face of hard core evidence.
The DVLA Situation
Amongst other issues bordering on fraud and corruption, officials of the DVLA were aiding and abetting with members of the public to issue especially licenses to people without recourse to legal procedures.
Even though the DVLA claims to have interdicted and open investigations into some of her officers caught on tape, little or nothing has been heard about that committee and whether it evaporated and wherever it has condensed at till date.
Whiles all this is going on, the same “wahala” that was strangling the innocent license applicant is back and with more vim and precautionary positioning by officials. Sad it is isn’t it that the DVLA would not do its job and when it has been done by a private entity, they are refusing to take charge; or are they?
Soul Takers and its counterpart social interest film, DOOM; brought chills to many viewers at the two day premiere in Accra and same throughout screenings across campuses in selected tertiary institutions.
But can we say that it did achieve the overall goal of righting the plethora of wrongs being perpetrated at the DVLA?
The journalist has resorted to a civil suit to compel the DVLA to act as per their legal mandate and even with that too, there is this hiatus that leaves too much to be desired. Lives have been lost, are being lost and would continue to be lost on our roads.
Mitigating of these loses I am convinced is one of the core reasons why a journalist would invest time, money and other human resources to give a vivid account of what REALLY (caps mine) pertains with the view that it would be remedied.
A return of a bad “status quo” is a tacit admission of dereliction of duty on one hand and an open admission that “we now know but won’t do anything about it” on the other hand.
God bless our homeland Ghana. Thanks for reading my thoughts.
Shaban Alfa Abdur Rahman
newcguide@gmail.com
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