Governs Kwame Agbodza, the Roads and Highways Minister-designate has revealed that Road tolls will be reintroduced in a new form.
The minister-designate for Roads and Highways further revealed that road tolls will be reintroduced with new technological platforms to rationalise revenue collection and ease traffic.
He further detailed that the events leading up to the controversial cancellation of the road toll have had financial implications with some contractors just being owned 5000 cedis.
According to him, the announcement of the cancellation of the road toll by Amoako Atta toll was an act of illegality.
Speaking during his vetting by the Appointments Committee on Monday, January 20, Kwame Agbodza detailed, “It is a matter that has attracted national attention. Accrual to the road fund was only GH¢250 million and we worked to increase it to gh¢1.5 billion, today, it is over GH¢2 billion, so we cautioned the government against cancelling the road tolls and we were surprised that they cancelled it. It was an act of illegality to cancel it.”
“Yes, road toll is coming back but not in the form of bringing obstructions on the road but on a technical or mechanised platform that will make it easier to collect”, he stated boldly.
He further revealed that interest on GH¢113m road debt has ballooned to GH¢665m, saying, “At the transition committee as of today, the NPP government is leaving a minimum of GH¢113 million commitments.
What we should be worried about though is that in that same document, they are saying that certificate unpaid as of today from the Government of Ghana amounts to about 20 billion and more worrying is that the interest on this GH¢113 is GH¢665m due to the nature of the contracts”, he added.
