A tragic accident in Konongo, Ashanti Region, has claimed two lives instantly when a fuel tanker with faulty brakes attempted to swerve but collided with a Kia truck and a Hyundai Elantra.
The incident occurred on the evening of Wednesday, November 6, 2024.
CCTV footage circulating on social media captures the moment the tanker veered off its lane, crashing head-on into the Kia truck. The force of the collision sent the damaged Kia truck speeding backward for several meters.
Two people died on the spot after a fuel tanker, which failed its brakes in an attempt to avoid crashing, ran into a pickup truck and a Hyundai Elantra this evening in the main township of Konongo in the Ashanti Region.
Residents of Dadieso, a town near Kwahu, united in concern, took action on Saturday, May 4, 2024, by blocking the Accra-Kumasi highway.
Their protest was sparked by an abandoned gas tanker left unattended for nearly three days, posing a significant risk to the area.
Videos circulating on social media depict the tanker partially submerged in a bush, with its head detached and gas still inside, raising fears of a potential explosion among local residents.
To highlight their precarious situation, residents used wooden materials to obstruct traffic flow along the vital highway linking Accra and Kumasi.
Responding to the urgent circumstances, the Ghana National Fire Service has been summoned to relocate the gas tanker safely and avert any potential disaster.
An eyewitness account highlighted the gravity of the situation: “The road at Dadieso, on the Kwahu side, is completely blocked. No vehicles can pass to or from Kumasi.
The community is on edge because a massive gas tanker has toppled over, and for three days, there has been no action from the Fire Service to address it.The fear of a gas explosion is palpable, hence the blockade.”
A tragic road accident occurred on Monday on the Amasaman-Nsawam road in the Greater Accra Region, resulting in the loss of seven lives.
The incident occurred when a tanker collided with a trotro vehicle, claiming the lives of seven out of the ten passengers on board.
An eyewitness, Alex Ahenkorah, explained to Adomonline.com that the tanker driver experienced brake failure, leading to the collision with the commercial vehicle.
“The commercial driver slowed down upon getting to a section of the road which is under construction due to a hole there. Unfortunately, the tanker driver which was behind crashed into it and destroyed it totally,” he said.
As per his account, bystanders intervened to extricate the victims from the heavily damaged vehicle, yet unfortunately, the majority of them showed no signs of responsiveness.
The Tanker Drivers Union has expressed concern about the potential threat to their business if the Chinese refinery, Sentuo Oil, persists in unloading fuel within the country.
A member of the Union, speaking to JoyNews, warned that if this practice continues, the drivers will cease the transportation of fuel nationwide. He emphasized that Ghanaian laws mandate that the transportation of petroleum products should exclusively be carried out by Ghanaian companies, and thus, Chinese firms should not be permitted to unload petroleum products.
Jantuah added that boycotting their business is their last resort if nothing is done about the situation which “will obviously bring shortages of fuel in the country.”
“The moment we deregulated, at the time it was GNPC distributing, the moment we deregulated, it was made that that portion should be given to Ghanaians so if you see, Shell, BP has tankers which do not belong to them but because we pick for them, we paint our tankers with their emblem but they don’t own the tankers.
“So why should the refinery now say that they have their tankers and distributing? Do TOR, NPA, and BDCs have their own tankers? They all depend on us so if you are coming in, you are going to kill our business and we have to fight for it,” he said.
Jantuah stated that the tanker drivers are currently frustrated by the situation because the majority of them owe money.
As a result, the union is urging the National Petroleum Authority to act as soon as possible to avoid further difficulties.
Officials reported on Tuesday that “unknown persons” stormed a tanker with a Singaporean registration about 550 kilometers off the coast of Ivory Coast.
According to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, the Success 9 had twenty crew members of various nationalities when people boarded it on Monday in the Gulf of Guinea. (MPA).
The MPA said on Tuesday evening it was working closely with the shipowner, as well as the Monrovia Area Maritime Relief Coordination Center and Singapore’s Changi Command and Control Center “to review the situation . and provide the necessary assistance”.
No other details were released.
The Gulf of Guinea has long been plagued by acts of piracy, as a key delivery route from Senegal to Angola over 5,700 km. Nigerian criminal gangs are behind most of the attacks.
Since 2021, however, pirates have been carrying out attacks further afield, in international waters, according to carriers.
Their violence and sophisticated techniques have encouraged companies in the sector to call for a larger foreign naval presence as the mission launched a decade ago to stem attacks by Somali pirates.
“It appears that serious attacks are increasing in the Gulf of Guinea. We hope that more international warships equipped with helicopter assets will be able to patrol the area,” Noel Choong of the Information Center on Security told AFP on Wednesday. piracy, emanating from the International Maritime Bureau.
In March, pirates seized a Danish tanker off the Congo, kidnapping six crew members before abandoning the ship.
A fuel tanker containing 54,000 litres of petrol with registration number GT 8109-19 has gone missing.
According to Adom FM, the tanker was heading towards Kumasi when it was intercepted it at Okanta, near Nsawam by a gentleman who identified himself as a police officer.
The said officer tried to stop the tanker at Okanta but the driver who was descending a hill refused to stop.
The police officer then joined a taxi cab with some 3 other persons and chased after the tanker. After stopping them, the tanker driver and his mate were ordered to park the tanker and join the other persons in the taxi to the police station while the police officer remained at the scene.
NADMO Officer for Ayensuano, Nana Minta Snr disclosed on Adom Fm’s Dwaso Nsem that, “when the Police stopped the tanker, the tanker driver suggested that he parks the tanker and close the doors so that he can go with them to the Police station. The officer however told the driver to get into the taxi and that he will personally drive the tanker and follow them”.
According to the NADMO Officer, the taxi made a turn after the tanker driver and his mate sat in and headed back to an illegal checkpoint created by the said police officer at Okanta, where they were tied up by the taxi driver and the other persons in the car.
“the tanker driver and his conductor were left tied up at the checkpoint till some residents came across them this morning and untied them. They then took them to Teacher Mante Police Station. The driver and his conductor then took a taxi to the scene where they parked the tanker only to find it missing,” Nana Minta Snr added.
He also added that, neither the identity of the said person who was dressed in the police uniform nor that of the taxi driver is known.
The NADMO Officer narrated, “the act was done by one Police Officer who was in police uniform and was holding an AK 47 fire arm. The tanker driver and his mate couldn’t make out his name due to the dark; he didn’t mention his name to the driver. The driver said that, if not for the fact that he was holding the gun, he wouldn’t have stopped. So the gun he was holding was what made him stop, not knowing they are armed robbers.”
He added that, the case is currently at Ayensuano Teacher Mante Police Station. He also disclosed the tanker driver’s name as Isaac Abban and added that, they are currently at the police station but the whereabouts of the tanker is still not known.
He however stated that, he has been told a tracker is installed on the tanker so they have informed the owner about the incident and they are trying to track the tanker to find the location.
An eight-year-old boy met his untimely death at Ahwetieso in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality after a fuel tanker knocked him down and ran over his head.
Joel Nana Baidoo, who is a pupil of Ideal College in Tarkwa was crossing the road to the other side when the tanker moving from Takoradi towards Tarkwa knocked him down on Tuesday morning.
Cars have been knocking people down all the time at Ahwetieso and this has become a concern for the citizens in the community who have expressed their displeasure on the recurrent incident.
This accident angered youth of the community who blocked the road to prevent cars from moving. This caused huge vehicular traffic on the road which took the intervention of the Tarkwa Police Commander for a free flow of traffic.
Some community members who spoke to GhanaWeb indicated that” we have called for speed rumps for so many years now, but nobody listened to us, and this boy has died just like that”, we shall find a way of doing our own speed rumps, to prevent our children from dying.
This has made community members call for speed rumps on that stretch of road in the community to stop this menace.
Speaking to GhanaWeb in an interview, Assembly Member for the Area Hon Fuseini Rashid Amadu noted that this is not the first time this is happening, adding that “two months ago, another person was knocked down in the Ahwetieso school, hence the agitations by the youth for speed rumps”.
He said he reported the intention of the youth to create their own speed rumps to the assembly where he was assured that the assembly will find a temporal measure to reduce speed on the road.
He added that the assembly has decided to put ropes on the road as temporal speed rumps while they wait for a discussion with the Ghana High Way Authority on a permanent solution to the problem.
The remains of the boy which was deposited at the morgue yesterday is expected to be buried today.
Meanwhile, the Municipal Chief Executive for Tarkwa Nsuaem, Hon Benjamin Kessie has visited the family to commiserate with them.
A two-year-old boy was burnt beyond recognition when two Diesel tankers caught fire near a filling station at Apremdo in the Effia-Kwesimitsim Municipality of the Western Region.
The boy was sleeping in a metal container close to the scene when the unfortunate incident occurred.
According to sources, the Diesel tankers were parked behind the filling station, awaiting orders from pump managers to discharge fuel into reservoirs.
The cause of the inferno was not immediately known, but some of the residents claimed that at about 3:00pm, they heard a blast from where the tankers were parked and realised the place was up in smoke.
“Most of the people in the area, including the mother of the two-year-old boy who was selling in the container, started running away to safety. The mother later realised that her two-year-old boy was sleeping in the metal container and before she decided to go back for the little boy, the inferno had gutted the container,†an eyewitness narrated.
The eyewitness said the mother of the boy was seriously injured when she tried to go and rescue him and was rushed to the hospital for treatment.
When DGN Online got to the area at about 3:15pm, heavy dark smoke could be seen in the skies.
Most of the people there were seen praying for the firemen to extinguish the fire because it was getting close to nearby pump stations and a market.
Before the fire was brought under control, more than half a dozen metal containers had been razed by the wildfire.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Ghana National Fire Service in the Western Region, Emmanuel Bonney, said the fire fighters were able to bring the fire under control some few minutes after arriving at the scene.
He cautioned the public against rushing to fire scenes to take pictures and converging around since they put their lives at risk.
