Ghanaians may have to pay more for
road levies as the Roads and Transport Committee in Parliament is considering
increasing these levies to generate more funds to maintain roads.
The Chairman of the Committee, Mr.
Theophilus Tetteh Chaie told Citi News the committee decided to increase
levies because “the revenue generated into the road fund account is not enough
to do maintenance works on these roads.”
“Over the years within the past ten
years, our road networks have quadrupled and that is bringing a lot of strain
on the resources that is generated into the road fund account.”
According to him, the amount of
money that is accrued from fuel levies, road tolls etc are not enough to
maintain these roads.
“The road fund needs about 850
million cedis per year to maintain our road network but we get less than 300
million, resulting in a shortfall.”
Aside a proposal for an increment in
road levies to address the problem, Mr. Tei also suggested a fixed
percentage for road levies to generate more revenue.
“I believe that instead of an amount, it [road levies] should be in the form of a percentage so that anytime there is an increment [in fuel prices] then there is an automatic adjustment …so that if [Fuel] is high, it [road levies] will go high, if it is low , it will also go low but in this case it is an amount so if today let’s say there is an increment in petroleum prices, the amount that goes into the road fund is the same because it is a fixed amount but if it were to be a percentage , the moment there is an increase the percentage will take into account the increment and that will give the fund more money,” he argued.
The Road Fund Act was enacted
to finance routine, periodic maintenance and rehabilitation of public
roads in the country.
The Fund is also used to assist
the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies in the exercise of their
functions relevant to public roads under any enactment.
Source: Citifmonline
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