The death toll in the Monday accident at Abofour in the Offinso Municipality of the Ashanti Region has risen to 20, as three of the 16 survivors rushed to the Saint Patrick Hospital in Offinso had passed on.
The three died shortly after they arrived at the hospital.
The Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Edmund Nyamekye, Offinso Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) Commander, disclosed this on Wednesday.
This was when he briefed journalists at the accident scene at Abofour to give an update on the ghastly accident involving a sprinter bus and an articulated truck.
Explaining further, DSP Nyamekye said confusion broke out at the Saint Patrick Hospital in Offinso when some irate family members of deceased stormed the mortuary and forcibly removed their dead relatives for burial.
According to the Offinso MTTD Commander, the angry family members said they did not understand why they had to pay GHc7, 400.00 as mortuary fee for all the deceased who had been deposited at the facility.
By the time the police got to the scene, he added, the irate youth had collected some of the bodies and fled.
Accompanied by officials of the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) and other stakeholders on a fact finding tour of the accident scenes on Wednesday, DSP Nyamekye said calm was restored when the Offinso Municipal Assembly intervened to settle the mortuary fees and “as we talk, the rest of the bodies have been released to their family members.”
According to him, the police were still looking for the driver of the sprinter bus who fled the scene after the accident.
At the Abofour accident scene, Mr Francis Afukaar, Chief Research Scientist at the Building and Road Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-BRRI) who was part of the fact-find delegation said the NRSA has a policy to go to accident scenes if, death toll was above five to investigate and did not understand why that was not done.
This, he said, would allow decisions to be taken to avert future occurrence, adding they were not only looking at the immediate action that led to the accident, but also circumstances leading to it.
This would have enabled them to write a comprehensive report for the authorities to take next line of action.
The Director-General of the NRSA, May Obiri-Yeboah, who led the Road Safety team said the Authority had been advocating for dual carriage roads to stem such accidents.
The team also visited Akomadan where six people were burnt to death on Tuesday on the same stretch of the road.
Monday’s incident involved a sprinter bus with registration number GS 4339-17 that loaded from Kumasi, heading towards Techiman and collided with an articulated truck travelling from the Northern Region towards Kumasi.
FROM KINGSLEY E.HOPE, KUMASI
