The National vice chairman of the Ghana Private Road Transport (GPRTU) Mr. Robert Sarbah has disclosed that his outfit has agreed on a reduction in transport fares, although it wouldn’t be capped at the same margin of increase.
Mr. Sarbah stated that although meeting with other stakeholders remained inconclusive, they will meet on July 28 to further deliberate on reducing fares for passengers.
“We have agreed that there should be some level of reduction or decrease in the transport fares… we incurred certain loses since March 15 when this thing came about and therefore we will work around it and we will also have to take a little amount of the percentage so that we are able to recoup whatever we’ve lost over the period”.
Robert Sarbah
He made this revelation as he welcomed government’s lifting of restrictions on full capacity intake of passengers. According to him, the matter of social distancing has posed a threat to the transport union, and as such the 15 percent increment was necessary.
“We’ve gone forward and backward with this very subject matter, we have advocated that government should allow us to take the full capacity of our passengers since over the period, March 15 when this social distancing was announced, that we should also abide by the social distancing in our vehicles. We’ve been losing greatly and that was as the result that we had the 15% increment and now that the social distancing is no longer applicable in our vehicles, we think it makes sense that we should be able to do something about that”.
“We went to a meeting today, with the ministry of transport… we don’t increase lorry fares or reduce lorry fares alone. The GPRTU, we do so in collaboration with other stakeholders… we all meet to come out with one voice in terms of transport fares and we were able to do same today, but the meeting remained inconclusive”
Although Mr. Sarbah did not reveal the exact percentage of reduction, he intimated that there will be instituted task force “to ensure that drivers adhere to the percentage as announced by the transport operators”.
Meanwhile, social distancing has been a source of concern for most passengers since the president announced the new directive on the transport sector. The National vice chairman of GPRTU however, disagreed with the possibility of COVID-19 transmission as a result of the change in sitting arrangement.
“Currently, there is no evidence that somebody has contracted this virus in any commercial vehicle… so it will be very difficult for someone to conclude that we’ll be transferring the disease from one passenger to the other. What we need to do is to ensure that the safety protocols are being adhered to”.
“When you don’t put on your nose mask, you will be disallowed from joining the vehicle, and we will also have to ensure that there will be limitation in talking”.
