By: John Sitsofe Mensah
Our elders have a saying: You do not blindfold a man, push him into a room full of thorns, and then beat him for bleeding. Yet, as we inch closer to the October 1st operationalisation of the Traffitech-GH system, this is exactly the theatre of the absurd being orchestrated against the ordinary Ghanaian.
Consider the sheer asymmetry of the preparation. Last week, inside the air-conditioned confines of the Stevens Hotel in Ho, forty-five officials—drawn from the MTTD, DVLA, NRSA, and the Judicial Service—underwent rigorous, practical training. They were given the full blueprint of the new Road Traffic Regulations, 2026 (L.I. 2519) and the Road Traffic (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Act 1153). They were taught exactly how Regulation 242 will automatically trigger fines, and they practised with the shiny new in-vehicle fixed cameras and Lasercam4 tripods.
They are ready. The hunters have been heavily armed, expertly trained, and thoroughly briefed on the forest’s exact dimensions.
But what about the prey? What about the taxpayer driving through Tema traffic or navigating the stretch to Accra, whose sweat and cedis funded the drafting of these very laws?
We get a press release. A polite, bare-minimum Facebook post notifying us that the trap has been set.
This is not just an oversight; it is a profound structural injustice. We pay the parliamentarians who draft the laws. We fund the procurement of the Lasercam4 cameras. We pay for the hotel conference rooms where the enforcers are trained.
Yet, when we seek to educate ourselves on the exact legal boundaries we are now forced to live by, we are met with a closed door. To read the actual text of L.I. 2519 or Act 1153, the citizen is expected to physically trek to the Assembly Press and hand over cash to buy a printed booklet.
Why, in an age of unprecedented information democratisation, is the law paid for by the people treated as a premium commodity?
The state demonstrates brilliant, cutting-edge digital efficiency in automated revenue collection and issuing fines. But when it comes to public education, it suddenly retreats into analogue lethargy, hiding public laws behind colonial-era commercial paywalls. The legal maxim dictates that ignorance of the law is no excuse. But how can a state morally enforce this maxim when it actively creates the ignorance it seeks to punish?
We are treating citizens not as partners in national development, but as mere revenue-generating units—walking ATMs waiting to be triggered by a tripod camera. Enforcement without education is not justice; it is state-sponsored ambush.
This must provoke a collective awakening. We cannot continue to accept a system where the full light of the law illuminates the enforcer, while the governed are left to stumble in the dark. It is time for civil society, transport unions, and every well-meaning Ghanaian- drivers, riders- to demand a structural reset.
If the government has the digital infrastructure to beam an automated speeding ticket to a mobile phone, it has the bandwidth to host L.I. 2519 and Act 1153 on a free, open-access public portal. We must demand that before a single cedi is collected under Traffitech-GH, the laws governing it are made freely and digitally accessible to every citizen.
Open the books. Remove the paywalls. Stop treating the Ghanaian citizen like a trespasser in our own country.
