Government Should Allow UG Road Tolls

Reference: “Credible information available to this paper indicates that, the John Mahama administration is not happy at the way the University wants to recover its expenses on making roads on campus more motorable.” [Extract from Ghanaweb General News of Friday, 31 January 2014 with the caption: “UG roads won’t be tolled”; Source: The Informer] .........................................................................

I do feel that one of the most ‘innovative ideas’ that Ghana’s premier university (University of Ghana), or any other university in the country has come up with is the idea of using road toll to rehabilitate roads that, otherwise, could not be rehabilitated with the ‘limited’ resources available to the university authorities.

Thus, it would be very disheartening and discouraging if it turns out to be true that “the John Mahama administration” is planning to stop the university authority from using toll to “recover its expenses on making roads on campus more motorable”. In my view, the current government, and for that matter any government in Ghana, should not only allow state university authorities to use road tolls to recoup road rehabilitation projects financed by them, but should in addition make it a government policy to allow and encourage companies, NGOs, educational institutions, including those that are state-owned, churches, as well as individuals with resources, to use their own funds [if they have such funds] to construct and rehabilitate public roads; and, after that, use road tolls to recoup their expenses.

Such a system of financing is one of the best ways of financing public facilities like roads. Through this kind of private initiative, which is based on the logic of the need for Ghanaians to learn to help themselves through the principle of ‘DO IT YOURSELF’ (DIY), various Ghanaian communities can do certain things by themselves, if there is no hope of getting the government (Ghana Government) to provide them with what they need. One does not need to convince readers that our country ((Ghana) is facing severe ‘funding crisis’. A day’s drive through the streets of Accra would show the deplorable state of most roads that confirms the severe ‘funding crisis’ facing our government. How the government of a country that is nearly sixty-year old got itself into such crisis should not be factored into our discussion. The raw fact is that we (Ghanaians) have reached a point in Ghana’s economic development where we must stop expecting our government to do everything for us. The government just can’t!

Road toll, being a form of direct ‘taxation’ levied on ‘users’ only, avoids hitting the general population, which usually include people who do not use such facilities. The University of Ghana road toll under discussion is, thus, fair and equitable; being based on the principle that those who use a particular public facility are those that should be asked to pay for it..... not those who don’t use it.

Apart from the advantage of ensuring ‘natural fairness’, road tolls levied on certain roads, especially those levied on roads used mainly by private cars, are ‘progressive’ in their effect, because the burden of taxation, in such cases, is mainly borne by the rich. As such, a road toll levied on roads at UG is likely to affect the richer members of the university working and studying population, in particular. Or broadly put, such a road toll affects the richer middle class of the Ghanaian population who can afford to pay, as opposed to using general taxation to finance such road rehabilitation.

One important fact that should not be overlooked by anybody taking part in a discussion of UG’s controversial but ‘innovative’ road toll is that, if University of Ghana is not allowed to recoup the expenditure it has incurred in connection with whatever road rehabilitation the university authority has undertaken, it will be the Government of Ghana that will ultimately be called upon to reimburse the university. If it falls on the Government of Ghana to finally pay such road rehabilitation cost, it will be Ghanaian taxpayers, including millions of poor people, who neither use the roads nor have wards at the university, that will be called upon through general taxation to ultimately pay the cost of such rehabilitation work.

IF USERS OF UNIVERSITY OF GHANA ROADS SHOULD NOT BE ASKED TO PAY FOR THE COST OF REHABILITATION OF ROADS USED BY THEM, WHY SHOULD POOR PEOPLE ELSEWHERE IN GHANA, WHO DO NOT USE THOSE ROADS, BE CALLED UPON TO PAY THEM THROUGH GENERAL TAXATION?

*I call on the current and all future Ghana Governments to, not only allow private companies, institutions [state-owned or otherwise], NGOs, Churches, as well as private individuals that have the financial means to undertake such road rehabilitation projects to recoup the expenditures they have incurred, but also encourage such non-state and state institutions or bodies to follow the shining example of University of Ghana by instituting similar progressive initiatives that may involve not only road rehabilitation but, also, other capital projects relating to public facilities that can be constructed or rehabilitated with private funds, and latter recouped by surcharging users of the facility.

What the government should do, in such a situation, is to establish a quasi-public body as overseer charged with the responsibility of authorising, supervising and controlling the level of charges, and the collection and payment modalities for such tolls that private toll-operators, like University of Ghana, etc, can put in place to enable them to recoup monies they have spent on public road-rehabilitation projects they have undertaken. With a body exercising controlling powers over such private toll operators, overcharging of road users who use roads financed by such non-state toll operators would be kept under control.

Global economic developments since the 2007/2008 “credit crush” shows that, in looking for alternative sources of financing public projects and expenditures like road construction and maintenance, people and authorities concerned must not overlook the danger of always expecting and asking central or local government to provide funding through charges to state coffers. Recent post “credit-crunch” economic developments in certain European countries that led to the bailing of such countries by the EU should teach Ghanaians and their governments to stop saddling central and local governments with ‘unbearable’ expenditures. Existing public roads and similar public facilities must be constantly rehabilitated. The money used to rehabilitate them must come from somewhere. If it comes from the government, it comes from the tax-payer. If it comes from private financiers, they (the private financiers) have to be reimbursed by somebody. It is right and fair to ask road users to reimburse ‘private’ financiers that are not charities for expenses they have incurred to make public roads motorable. Unless the Government of Ghana provides special and separate funds for rehabilitation of roads in our state universities, including UG, the government must leave the university authorities to do what they need to do to recover road rehabilitation costs.