I Don’t Support Bringing Back Road Tolls – Ashanti Regional Minister

The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, last year announced that government will be reintroducing the collection of road tolls on selected roads in the country this year.

The reintroduction of the road toll was one of the revenue measures contained in the 2023 budget presented to Parliament by the Finance Minister.

“The fiscal policy measures to underpin the 2023 Budget for consideration and approval by Parliament include the reintroduction of tolls on selected public roads and highways with a renewed focus on leveraging technology in the collection to address the inefficiencies characterized by the previous toll collection regime,” paragraph 462 of the 2023 Budget statement read.

But the Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah has disagreed with the reintroduction of the road tolls.

Narrating how he once, as Regional Minister, had to personally get involved in distributing tickets in order to ease the traffic congestion on a certain road in the Ashanti Region, he noted that bringing back the tolls will cause unnecessary traffic.

To him, he will only subscribe to the idea of reintroducing road tolls on the condition that it will be electronic.

“We should consider maybe electronic but if we are to go back to the previous form, I won’t support it because it gives headache”, he said during “Kokrokoo” panel discussion programme on Peace FM.