"With constant walking for a 12-month period averaging over 400 miles a month a large number of carriers became incapacitated from sore feet", according to archival records.
It was not long before the Government Transport Department realized that the profits were rolling in at consid¬erable human cost. We also gather that a load carrier took eight days walking bare foot, to carry a load of 26 kilogrammes from Cape Coast to Kumasi at a cost of £1 6s. We learn from the archives that the Gov¬ernment Transport Department in its very first year of operations recruited 4,800 load car¬riers and labourers, handled a total of 16,000 loads and made a hand¬some profit of £1,295. In September of 1901 the colonial British Administration, recognizing the need for a state transport organization, set up the Gov¬ernment Transport Department (GTD) to supply labour and human carriers for transporting supplies for both the colonial administration and for the mines. The stench of excreta literally threw the expatriate to the ground, where upon he picked himself up cursing loud, and all but strangled the poor fellow. In the absence of motor vehicles, our ancestors carried and expatriate government officials around in hammocks.įurther up north where expatriate offi¬cials were sometimes carried astride the shoulders of natives, the story is told of a hungry man with a loose bowel who carried a district commissioner on a long journey and fouled his shorts during the trip. The idea was to minimize wear and tear and gen¬erally protect the feet!ĭuring the early stages of British colonial rule, the main mode of transport involved the use of human labour to transport stores for the colonial administration by the head load. Rather than tar the roads, the British colonial administration at one time experiment¬ed with tarring the feet of our ancestors who carried passengers and goods for then STC. You may find it difficult to believe but that is the truth! More than 100 years ago, the organization that is today known as the Intercity STC Company had in the place of the fleet of luxury coaches it oper¬ates today, an army of muscular Gold Coast natives to carry its goods and passengers across the country bare foot.
#Marcopolo buses free#
The buses which are designed to meet the cardinal requirements of modern road travel, namely safety, comfort and convenience, are equipped with free WiFi, refrigerator, washroom, security cameras, television, mobile phone charging points on every seat, coffee machines and computerised tracking equipment.
The fleet will carry passengers on domestic and international routes. Yet another landmark chapter in the history of the nation’s premier state-owned transport company, the Intercity STC Company, was written last Friday when President John Mahama commissioned 50 brand-new 44-seater and 50-seater Scania Marcopolo buses for the company.
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