Amid the concerns of the new government’s agenda to reintroduce road tolls, a development policy advocate, Kwame Sowu, is vehemently kicking against the plan.
Kwame Sowu says the road toll form of taxation is unfair and not equitable, arguing that equity should be at the heart of Ghana’s revenue mobilization strategy.
In his argument, Sowu highlighted the unfairness of making nurses, traders, and low-income workers commuting from Kasoa and Ashaiman pay tolls daily, while wealthy residents of Cantonments and East Legon contributed nothing to road maintenance.
According to him, the road toll system, before its abolishment, on average generated under GH₵100 million annually. This figure, he says, is even insignificant compared to the country’s road infrastructure needs.
“It is not fair for a nurse who lives in Ashaiman or Kasoa to pay road tolls daily, whereas an affluent CEO in Cantonments or East Legon pays nothing,” he indicated in a Facebook post.
Instead, Sowu is pushing for a more equitable, fluid, and inelastic revenue model that would guarantee consistent, high-yield contributions from all economic classes.
Though he lamented the eventual distortion of his proposal, he maintains that equity should be at the heart of Ghana’s revenue mobilization strategy.
He indicated that, “To replace road tolls, which yielded less than 100 million cedis annually, I proposed a multi-billion revenue source that was considerably inelastic, equitable, easy to collect, and most importantly, exponentially high in yield.”
Although he has been struggling to get the support for his proposal, he insists equity should be central to taxation, hence his strong opposition to road tolls. Kwame Sowu is calling for a rethinking of Ghana’s Road Revenue Model, especially the controversial road toll system.
