I never knew the traveling time from Sunyani to Accra has been increased from around seven or eight hours to some excruciating 13 Ghana hours. At one point, I thought I was travelling from Accra to Ouagadougou by bicycle.
My journey from Sunyani to Accra last Monday night (last night) was the longest journey I’ve ever made. Ordinarily, when a Jeon VIP bus leaves Sunyani around 9pm, it usually gets to Accra between 3:45am and 5am. However, when the VIP bus with Registration number KK 1 – 20 took off in Sunyani at about 9:20pm, little did I know that additional traveling time had been added without any notifications. Guess what, we got to Accra after 10am today!
The VIP bus with Registration number KK 1 – 20 broke down twice from Sunyani to Accra between last night and this morning. It was the first time that a bus I’m traveling on from Sunyani to Accra has ever broken down on the way.
After setting off in Sunyani at about 09:20pm last night, it first broke down at Sofoline in Kumasi (a few meters to the Sofoline interchange) at about 11:30pm – our first baptism of fire. The driver and the bus conductor managed to fix the fault, which had to do with an oval-like object located very close to the driver’s side of the front aisle.
At about 01:50am when the bus got to the Sky Plus Rest Stop at Nobewam in the Ejisu-Juabeng municipality, it developed the same fault again, this time it was the passenger side of the front aisle. “Please, everyone should get down so we could remove the front tyre and fix the fan”, the driver’s mate announced to the amazement of passengers. For over 2 and half hours, we were standing by the roadside waiting for the fault to be fixed.
Finally, when it was fixed, our “journey to Kukurantumi” continued. As for the inconveniences, psychological trauma and all the other nasty incidences on the way, the least said about it the better for me.
Our bus was the last bus to get to the terminal in Sunyani, arriving at almost 9pm from Accra and it was not cleaned before we were asked to board. It was full of take-away bags, polythene bags, papers and other wastes all over. There were no safety checks on the bus before asking passengers to get on board.
Even before passengers boarded, some people at the VIP terminal in Sunyani were heard murmuring: “This bus looks old, it should be restricted to short distances like Sunyani to Kumasi.” True to their words, this bus gave its passengers a hell of time.
I think Jeon VIP is doing quite well in the transport sector, but the company needs to really sit up and up its game before passengers begin to advise themselves.
In the meantime, my lawyers are in a crunch meeting to take a decision on possible legal action against the owner and the driver as well as Jeon VIP for the inconvenience, trauma, headache and joint pains I suffered because of the poor service rendered.
Source: A concerned passenger
