As passengers continue to battle endless queues, packed tro-tros, missed appointments, and rising transport fares, Senior Vice President of IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil is proposing that the government should rather support the proven private transport to scale up to address the menace.
The private legal practitioner strongly opposes the proposals for the government to establish a state transport company to address the situation.
Kofi Bentil believes that the government should stop trying to run transport businesses and instead empower private operators who already know how to move people efficiently.
Many workers and students over the past few weeks have battled a hectic period, getting to work or school on time. It has become like a daily gamble. The struggles inflame tempers and wallets are strained due to the scarce public transport system.
For Kofi Bentil, calls for the government to act are in the right direction. However, his concern is with how the government should intervene.
Start With What Works, Not What Sounds Good
Speaking on TV3’s Key Points on Saturday, Bentil argued that Ghana has decades of evidence showing the state struggles to successfully operate transport companies. From Omnibus to City Express to MetroMass, the pattern has been the same: heavy public investment, poor management, rundown buses, and eventual collapse.
“Government has no business running a transport business because we’ve never done it well,” he said, recalling how MetroMass alone cost about 25 million dollars, only to deteriorate within a few years.
His alternative is that instead of sinking large sums into one state-run company, the government should create a revolving fund and start by supporting five proven private transport operators with five million dollars each.
He believes that private operators are people who have already shown they can run transport businesses without state input, pointing to companies like VIP and OA.
An Experience from the Past
Kofi Bentil alluded to history, which is his lived experience, to buttress his argument. While state-owned transport companies struggled under layers of bureaucracy, private operators quietly stepped in and filled the gap.
He recalled how a private operator, popularly known as “King of Kings” in Odorkor, revived old and abandoned buses that had been declared unserviceable after sitting idle for years. Those buses were repaired and returned to the road, moving people again.
At the same time, companies like VIP and OA, often run by individuals without formal corporate structures or flashy offices, were moving more passengers than established state transport firms.
“If you go to STC, they have a HR manager, they have chief accountant, they have chief executive or whatever, they wear coat and tie to work and whatever it is, and they run a transport business. And we’re not running it well. And after every so many years, the thing runs down, we have to go and put money inside,” he recollected.
He added, “Just around that time, we got VIP, we got OA. These were transport companies, more or less, run by people without due respect to them, most of whom have not finished school. They don’t have HR managers or whatever, and in a short time, they were doing multiples of what STC was doing without any state input.”
The Case for a Revolving Fund to Support the Private Sector
Central to Bentil’s proposal is accountability. He stresses that the money should not be free grants.
Under the revolving fund model, supported companies would pay back the funds over time. Once recovered, the same money would be used to support another batch of operators, gradually expanding capacity across the city.
This approach, he argues, avoids the cycle where government repeatedly pours money into failing entities, only for assets to be auctioned cheaply, sometimes to insiders, and then resold for profit.
“If you take that 25 million dollars, split it into five five five million dollars, and give it to some of these people who have proven themselves to be able to run transport business, you have five companies. They will pay back the money, you can turn back the money, and then we have another five companies,” he proposed.
Government’s Role: Build Roads, Not Run Buses
Bentil is not arguing for government to abandon the transport sector entirely. Instead, he believes the state should focus on what it does best which is infrastructure.
Good roads, proper terminals, traffic management systems, and clear regulations, he says, will allow private operators to thrive and serve commuters better.
For more than 50 years, trotros have remained the backbone of public transport in Ghana, not because they are perfect, but because private operators find ways to keep them running.
He believes that the success story of the trotro alone should tell the state something.
The Bottomline
With continuous exhaustion of commuters, overcrowded vehicles, and unpredictable journeys, Bentil’s believes the solution lies in a collaboration between the private sector and the government.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, he suggests backing those already moving it forward.
As transport stress continues to weigh on productivity and daily life, he believes that if Ghana wants quick, scalable relief, it should stop fighting the private sector and start financing it smartly.
