TAXI DRIVERS CAUTIONED AGAINST CAR SNATCHERS (PAGE 42, JULY 15, 2010)

THE Eastern Regional Police Command has appealed to taxi drivers who are hired from Accra to the region to be alert to car snatchers.
   It said the command had observed with concern that lately, taxis were often snatched from their drivers at gunpoint in remote areas of the region.
“The modus operandi of the car snatchers is for one of its members to lure a driver of a fairly new taxi from Accra to the Eastern Region mostly at night or on Sundays and make the armed gang attack the driver and snatch the taxi,” the command stated.
In a statement signed by the Public Affairs Officer of the Eastern Regional Police Command, Chief Inspector Yaw Nketiah-Yeboah, “the most notorious routes for the car-snatching gang are the New Tafo-Kukurantumi-Koforidua road and the Asuboni rails area off the Nkawkaw main road.”
According to the statement, 16 taxis, including eight bearing this year’s registration numbers, were snatched from their drivers within a period of six months in the Eastern Region.
“Three of these vehicles were snatched on June 5 and 6, 2010 at Enyiresi on the Bunso-Nkawkaw stretch of the Accra-Kumasi road and two others last Sunday at Akyem-Asafo,” it stated.
“This indicates that drivers of new taxis are the victims,” the statement said, and appealed to taxi drivers to avoid plying such routes at odd hours.
The statement also advised taxi drivers to immediately report any attack or suspicious and unusual movement by individuals to the nearest police barriers or police stations to enable the police to act in time.