A dispatch rider, who has served some of Ghana’s recent leaders, has been bedridden for months after an accident.
Neither the government he served faithfully nor the Ghana Police Service he proudly represented has helped the cop beyond three months, though he needs medication for more than a year.
The 44-four-year-old police corporal is married with three children. The man is a trained dispatch rider and some time ago was posted by the Motor, Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police Service to be part of President Nana Akufo-Addo’s motorcade. Before then, the policeman had been a dispatch rider for ex-President Jerry John Rawlings, just as he had rendered similar services to a retired Chief Justice and an ex-Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, who is now deceased.
Today, the corporal says he has sold many of his property to pay hospital bills. Corporal Obeng’s woes started when he had an accident on the Accra – Kumasi Highway, a crash that inflicted severe injuries on his body.
In an interview with Adom Kaseɛ‘s junketing reporter Prince Owusu Asiedu, the policeman lamented how his employer, the Ghana Police Service, chose to support him for the first three months only.
According to him, on the highway, he was faced with having to dodge a Hyundai Grace 800 commuter bus at top speed with highlights blurring his vision or crash head on. And, it was in his desperate attempt to protect his body and the motor from smashing into the tro-tro bus that he fell on the road.
According to him, the driver, who caused his accident, hit and drove over him on the road and left him behind.
Our news team spoke to the wife of the policeman, Cecilia Obeng Essle, and his best friend, Fred Atta, about what they made of the policeman’s condition and they expressed worry about the development.
When contacted, Assistant Superintendent of Police Alexander Obeng, Head of Research and Training at the Police Motor, Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police Service said the policeman has the right to submit all claims to the Public Affairs Department of the Ghana Police Service for payment.
Adom TV News Crew further approached a Member of Parliament’s Committee on Interior and Defence, Collins Amankwa. On hearing the sad story of the junior police officer, the lawmaker used the medium of Adom TV to appeal to the Inspector General of Police to take a critical look at the welfare and insurance in the Police Service.
As far as the people’s representative is concerned, the Police Administration owes it a duty to Ghana to also improve the risk allowances payable to cops who get injured in their line of duty.
