Magnus Opare-Asamoah, Deputy Minister of Transportation has said the Road Fund from 2000 to 2006 generated 4.618 trillion cedis. He was speaking at a public forum on financing of road maintenance organised by the Ghana Road Fund Secretariat at Takoradi. Mr Opare-Asamoah said it was projected that a revenue of 1.4 trillion cedis would accrue to the fund this year to enable it meet the road maintenance budget of the agencies that subsist on the fund to undertake their maintenance programmes. He said the Road Fund's performance for 2000/2006 had been satisfactory and since its restructuring the fund had provided a regular source of funding for road maintenance. Mr Opare-Asamoah said the Fund's current capacity could sustain about 60 per cent of the country's road maintenance needs. He said the remaining 40 per cent financing gap had implications for road contractors whose payment certificates were paid from the fund and district assemblies whose roads maintenance requirements continued to increase. Mr Opare-Asamoah said the financing gap meant about 40 per cent of the country's road network were unattended to in a year. "The cumulative effect of this backlog over a period of time is very high and a source of concern because it has been estimated that a one per cent delay in maintenance costs eight times more to restore the road". Mr Opare-Asamoah said the burden of road maintenance should be a shared responsibility between the government and the road user. Mr Opare-Asamoah said the contribution of road users by way of fees and tolls, Road Fund formed an insignificant part of the actual cost of the construction and maintenance of roads. He said the public contributed GHC6 or 60,000 cedis on every litre of fuel bought and pay 5 Gp or 500 cedis as road tolls for small vehicles. "These amounts are incredibly low for any meaningful impact to be made on road maintenance programmes". Anthony Evans Amoah, Western Regional Minister, said the region had 1,642 kilometres of trunk roads and 6150 kilometres of feeder roads. He said despite government interventions, the state of roads in the region, particularly the feeder roads was not the best because less than one per cent of feeder roads in the region are tarred. Mr Amoah called on the Ghana Road Fund Board and the Ministry of Transportation to pay particular attention to roads in the region and rehabilitate them. Source: GNA