Following the Finance Minister’s ‘Agyenkwa’ Budget for the 2022 fiscal year which saw the scrapping of tolls on public roads and bridges, hawkers at the Pwalugu Toll Booth in the Talensi District have expressed worry over the problems scrapping the tolls pose to them.
According to them, it will have a damning impact on their economic activities. This they say is because they rely on the hold-up the toll booths create to sell their wares to commuters. The profits from these sales, the hawkers say go into supporting their families.
When A1 News visited the site this morning, some hawkers aid they were bewildered by the news as the government’s decision didn’t take cognizance of their welfare.
A second-year senior high school student, Philip Alira, explained that his family has been conducting business at the Pwalugu Toll Booth for years. He lamented that now the booth has been closed, his family will have some difficulty supporting him in his education. “For the past years, I have been here with my aunt and my dad. They sell here to send me to school. I’m in my second year and next year I will finish school but looking at the situation, it will be difficult. Sales are not going on,” he explained.
“As I am standing here, next month I have to go to school, now that sales are not going on how will they do and then get money to go to school?” he quizzed.
A trader who has been selling boiled eggs at the Pwalugu Toll Booth explained that she used proceeds from her daily sales to cater for the education of her child. “The closing of the toll has affected me, I am not having a husband. It is this place that I use to feed myself,” she said.
Zacchaeus Alira, a trader who said he’s been doing business at the Pwalugu Toll Booth for over a decade worried that the situation will have dire consequences on the people of the area. “The toll booth [has] helped me a lot. I have one boy who is a nurse now, I managed [selling] here to send him to school. I have another who has completed senior high school and it is here I have been managing,” he explained. He said because he is not educated, he has limited options to survive.
Background
The Minister for Roads and Highways Kwasi Amoako-Attah issued a directive to stop the collection of road tolls on public roads and bridges. The directive which followed the presentation of the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, takes effect from 12 am, Thursday, November 18, 2021.
Deputy Minister for Roads and Highways Member of Parliament (MP) for Afigya Sekyere East, Stephen Pambiin Jalulah said the decision by the Ministry of Roads and Highway to immediately cease the collection of road tolls on public roads and bridges was to prevent unnecessary altercations between roads users and toll booth attendants.
Mr. Jalulah said information reached the Ministry after the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, read the 2022 Economic Policy and Budget Statement that some vehicle operators forced their way through the barriers despite warnings by attendants that the abolition of the road tolls had not kicked in.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Private Transport Union (GPRTU) has disclosed that vehicle operators in the country came together to moot the idea to cease the collection of road tolls on public roads and bridges. The GPRTU said in a meeting with the Parliamentary Select Committee on Transport in June early this year, the unions suggested the move to government as a measure to stop revenue leakage.
The General Secretary of GPRTU Godfred Abulbire, speaking to Samuel Mbura on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show explained that the Unions met the Parliamentary Select Committee to address the many concerns of road crashes on the Accra-Kumasi Highway.
A1Radioonline.com|101.1MHz| Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith & Kennedy Zongbil|Ghana
