A ranking member on roads and transport committee of parliament, Kwame Governs Agbodza, has dared government to admit the revenue generating factor of road tolls in the infrastructural development of the country.
According to him, the minister for finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, must apologize to the people of this country, “toll workers he sacked and find the money” to pay them following his announcement that the Accra-Tema Motorway will be tolled after the rehabilitation and extension project is completed in his reading of the mid-year budget on July 25, 2022. He noted that the minority in principle has always believed that “generating local revenue to do road projects” was necessary for the country.
Mr Agbodza highlighted the need for the finance minister to equally apologize to the Speaker of Parliament, “who they vilified and said that if he likes he should go and collect the tolls himself”.
“Indeed, we instituted the road fund because we realized that we couldn’t rely on foreigners to do this forever, so we brought the road fund… In the first place, if tolling is a factor of generating revenue to build roads, just say so and exactly what you did when they brought this law on luxury vehicle tax. We opposed it [and] we told them it wouldn’t work. When they implemented it and it didn’t work, they came back and we took it off.”
Kwame Governs Agbodza
Mr Agbodza explained that road tolls are a factor of “revenue for improvement of road maintenance” in every advanced country. He stated that things could have been done differently to see how “we could augment the accrual and make it reasonable enough” to do other things.
Government urged to pay outstanding debt to contractors
The ranking member on roads and transport committee of parliament disclosed that the finance minister at one point revealed that the “collection of road tolls generates a bad environmental condition” and the money was not good enough. He expressed that there are some contractors owed by government and during the budget reading, the finance minister “didn’t say a word about how he is going to pay about GHC10 billion” owed Ghanaian road contractors.
“As we speak, there are hundreds of contractors we call Small Medium Contractors who normally weed our roadsides [and] do little things on the road. They have worked since 2019 and they have not been paid. Some of them are owed as little as GHC2,000, GHC5, 000 and GHC10, 0000. Some of them are sick and can’t get money to treat themselves and they listen to the finance minister, he didn’t say a word how he is going to pay them…”
Kwame Governs Agbodza
On his part, the Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways, Stephen Jalula, disclosed that the government’s policy to cancel collection of road toll remains in force. He emphasized that any decision to reintroduce road toll will be laid before Parliament for further action.
“My understanding is that the policy has not changed and it is not going to change under this new statement that was read. What he [Finance Minister] did say was that the Tema Motorway will be done under PPP and the road will be tolled. If subsequently, the government decides to change the policy on the road tolling, that one will come to Parliament for consideration.”
Stephen Jalula
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