Ghana’s ECOWAS Brown Card Insurance Bureau has donated road safety equipment to the police and run a highway awareness campaign while marking the scheme’s 44th anniversary.
As part of its corporate social responsibility, the Bureau gave the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service 300 body bags and 200 reflective vests to support its management of road traffic incidents and improve public safety.
A team led by the Bureau’s General Secretary, Richard Sabah Eshun, also joined the police on a sensitisation drive along the Amasaman to Nsawam highway, educating local and foreign drivers on what to do after a crash involving a foreign registered vehicle, whether as a victim or a responsible party.
The activities marked 44 years of the scheme, which leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) established through a protocol adopted in Cotonou, Benin, on 29 May 1982 to ease cross border movement and ensure compensation for victims of accidents caused by visiting motorists.
The Bureau’s Chairman, Fred Saka, who is also chief executive of Vanguard Assurance, said the secretariat, set up in 1987, handles cross border third party motor claims and issues Brown Cards through licensed insurers in Ghana.
The commemoration ran under the theme of digitalisation for effective cross border claims management. Speaking for Insurance Commissioner Dr Abiba Zakariah, National Insurance Commission (NIC) official Stella Jonah said digital tools could “improve efficiency, transparency, speed and accessibility” in claims handling.
Saka added that the Bureau had worked with the NIC to fold the Brown Card into the Motor Insurance Database (MID), digitising the certificates and making cover easier to verify.
Solidarity messages came from the Ghana Insurers Association, public transport unions and the police, as national bureaux across other ECOWAS member states held similar anniversary events.
