The Ministry of Roads and Highways has stated that no toll booth attendant will be laid off following the scrapping of road and bridge tolls across the country.
It follows its own directive for the immediate discontinuation of the collection of tolls after the Finance Minister announced the abolishment of same in the 2022 budget in Parliament.
The toll attendants and even hawkers along such facilities have expressed fears that the decision will lead to job losses.
But speaking to Citi News, Head of the Public Affairs Unit of the Ministry of Roads and Highways, Nasir Ahmed Yartey, said all the employees will be retrained and redeployed.
“So the Ministry has put in place arrangements to ensure that no toll worker is laid off. No toll worker will be laid off. They will continue to receive their salaries as per the contract they have with various employers, and that is one point I want to make clear.”
“Going forward, they will be retrained, and then they will be deployed to other areas along our road management system, but the most important thing is that no road worker will lose his or her work”, he assured.
Meanwhile, Mr. Yartey has disclosed that all the toll booth structures would also be removed.
“The Ministry will decommission all toll booths nationwide, and so that exercise will commence very soon where all tooth booths will be decommissioned so that there will be no toll booths along our roads in the country, but it will take some time.”
In a related development, a Minister of State at the Finance Ministry, Charles Adu-Boahen, says the money that would have been paid as road tolls will now be taken care of by the 1.75 percent Electronic Transaction Levy.
Though the levy will affect Ghanaians who do not use tolled roads, Mr. Boahen said the government was trying to share the burden of levies to develop road infrastructure.
The monies raised from tolls go into the Road Funds and are supposed to be used for maintaining public roads.
