Forum on financing road maintenance held
The Ghana Road Fund Management Board on Thursday held a public forum on financing road maintenance in Koforidua.
The forum is aimed at sensitizing the public and all stakeholders on the role of the Road Fund in the financing of road maintenance in Ghana.
It also sought to provide a platform for explaining the rationale for the collection of tolls and other levies into the fund.
Mr Joe Gidisu, Minister of Roads and Highways, in a speech read on his behalf, noted that the cost of road construction and its subsequent regular maintenance required a huge financial outlay.
“This cannot be met entirely from the country’s annual budgetary provision and the support received from our developmental partners”.
He said it was increasingly recognized that the users of the roads must have to directly or indirectly contribute to the cost of their maintenance.
Mr Gidisu said that was based on the argument that the user should pay for the service rendered.
“The burden of road maintenance must therefore become a shared responsibility between the Government, who builds or constructs, and the road user who benefits from the access thus created.”
He said it was against that imperative need to address the shortfall in the financing gap in road maintenance programme that the Road Fund Act, Act 536 was passed by Parliament in 1997 to establish the Road Fund Board.
Mr Gidisu indicated that revenue accruals into the Fund were to be exclusively dedicated to routine and periodic maintenance of road network.
He noted that the capacity of the Fund presently could sustain only 60 percent of road maintenance needs, which by implication translated to about 40 percent of road network being left unattended to in a year.
Mr Gidisu said to address that problem; the Government had been studying some recommendations that had been made by the Ministry to make the Fund more responsible to road maintenance needs.
He said the government had also been exploring other financial methods such as the long term pre-financing, to carry out road maintenance.
“Another area of Funding, which Government has been giving serious consideration to is the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) and the Maintain, Operate and Transfer (MOT) concepts of Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements.”
Mr Gidisu urged all to support and cooperate with the Road Fund Board and for that matter the Government to help reduce the deterioration of roads through the regular and prompt payment of the levies and fees, which go into the Road Fund.
He noted that the time had come to take the difficult but inevitable decision of raising sufficient funds to meet the road maintenance bill.
Mr Ebenezer Okletey Terlabi, Deputy Eastern Regional Minister, indicated that while efforts were being made by the Government to solicit donor funds for the development of the road sector, there was the urgent need to support the Ghana Road Fund.
He noted that the inability of road users to pay appropriate tolls for the use of the bridges, roads and vehicle inspection fees greatly affects Government’s effort to generate enough funds to ensure the regular maintenance of the roads.
Source: GNA