A tax analyst, Dr. Abdallah Ali-Nakyea has questioned government’s decision to abolish the collection of road tolls and suggested that the government should rather relocate such facilities.
According to him, the government’s reasons for refusing to collect road and bridge tolls in 2022 do not appear strong enough.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday, he argued that there were other ways of going around the issue of vehicular traffic caused by the toll collection, which was one of the reasons for the abolishment.
He said it was unfortunate policy decision has shifted from increasing road tolls to completely abolishing them.
“Why do you abolish tolls? Even last year, the policy direction was to increase tolls so that we can get more to rebuild the infrastructure. This is what I complain about– policy inconsistency on the economic front. If the reason for abolishing the tolls to bring e-levy has to do with congestion and fumes at the normal traffic, even the toll booths can be relocated instead of being abolished because our towns and cities have grown to outstretch the toll booth, lets’ relocate it. This will not be the first time relocating toll booths. Let’s look at that and increase it,” he said.
Dr. Ali-Nakyea further made a call for full or partial digitalization of the road toll collection process to address the challenge of traffic congestion.
“In the stakeholder engagements that were held, people were for an increase in tolls because they could see road networks being developed and if it is about congestion, we have some lanes that are e-tickets so that you don’t stop or wait. Can we with digitalization go that way so that all the toll booths or portions of it will be digitized so that people who are regular on that road get to pay upfront like the system we have in Legon,” he suggested.
The post Don’t abolish road toll system, relocate booths instead – Ali-Nakyea to government appeared first on Citinewsroom - Comprehensive News in Ghana.
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