Government is considering automating tolling on the country’s roads to eliminate human contact and thereby reduce stealing at the tollbooths.

 Joseph Ebo Hutton, the National Chairman of the Association of Road Contractors revealed this on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Monday.

He was justifying calls for an increase in the road tolls which he said are simply too low to raise the needed funds to maintain the country’s roads.

Mr. Hutton conceded that some 9million Ghana cedis has not been accounted for by the Road Fund since 2010.

A major contributor to the Road Fund is road tolls but some 9 million collected in 2010 could not be accounted for.

Mr. Hutton, who is a member of the Road Fund Management Board said he wasn’t on the board when private companies tasked with collecting the road tolls, failed to account for the 9million cedis.

He, however, assured efforts are being made to retrieve the money.

Touching on the inadequacy of the money available to the Road Fund, he said the number of roads needing maintenance had more than doubled between 2000 and 2015.

"We are now looking at about 73,000 kilometres of roads that have to be maintained. If Ghanaians are comlaining that they are not seeing anything, it is because the money that come into the fund is not enough to enable us see anything [in terms of roads maintenance]".

He said contractors are owed more than 300 million cedis and there another another 300 million plus cedis debt and "all these things have to be paid by the Road Fund."

Commenting on complaints about quality of work being done local contractors, Mr. Hutton said delayed payments is primarily responsible for the situation where road works are often said to be shoddy.

A contractor will do a road, put on the first coat "and then he has to wait for one year and a half to be paid. Now the first coat is not supposed to be driven on for more than three months before he comes to apply the ssecond and final filling because it is not a very solid material - it is just to cover the base material that was put on it (raod) to fill it a little bit - and so when it stays for over one-and-a-half years...the road is being used and then because the material on it is not the final filling, the potholes start develping," he said.

When this happens, he regretted, people raise concerns about the quality of work.

If the road tolls are increased, he argues, it will help a great deal in maintaining the country's roads.