The Vice Chairperson of the Roads and Transport Committee of Parliament, Alex Tetteh Djornobuah, says when road tolls are reintroduced, they will be digitalised.

According to him, this system will reduce the number of human activities and increase productivity.

“Last week at our committee meeting, the Minister and his agency briefed the committee that they are going to reintroduce the road toll.  It will not be in the old form. It will be digitalised and at the end of the day the human phase will be minimised and we can save a lot of money," he said in an interview on Joy FM’s TopStory on Friday, December 15, 2023.

Mr Djornobuah explained that monies generated would be used to help fund the $388 million road projects recently approved by Parliament. 

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“For example, the reconstruction or the expansion of Ofankor to Nsawam road, I think it will be part of the tolling. Just this afternoon, we passed about $388 million for the reconstruction of the Motorway and in that agreement, there is an introduction of road toll. That means that the PPP or the private person who is going to construct this particular road will use that one as part of the revenue to defray the margin that the government is taking,” he said.

When reminded that it was that the majority caucus pushed for the cancellation of the road toll despite minority concerns about the obvious revenue loss, he insisted that at the time, the government assumed that with the introduction of the e-levy, enough revenue would be generated. 

Also, he said the traffic situation around the Motorway was a major reason the Roads Minister had pushed for the cancellation of the road toll. However, now that the road will be reconstructed, traffic would be a thing of the past.

The Sefwi Akontombra MP said “Since both parts of the House has accepted it, I think it's good news for Ghana and we hope to see the modernization of the road tolls."

• Read also: Road tolls likely coming back in 2024 – Ministry tells Parliament

On the question of whether the tolls will be increased, he said, “We have to have a national dialogue on how to finance our roads. If we look elsewhere, the government is not burdened with road construction. Looking at the request for various constituencies and elsewhere I think that we need to debate. 

“If you look at the other African countries elsewhere our road tolls is the least among the other countries. The reintroduction, I think we should have a consultative stakeholders meeting to agree so that at the end of the day, road financing will not be a burden on our budget.”