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13.04.2021 Feature Article

We Pay Yearly Roadworthy Charges to the DVLA but We Drive Daily on Roads that are not Car Worthy: Lamentations from my Hamlet

We Pay Yearly Roadworthy Charges to the DVLA but We Drive Daily on Roads that are not Car Worthy: Lamentations from my Hamlet
13.04.2021 LISTEN

The caption of this article is tantamount to the fact that Ghana is an oil mining country yet Ghanaians pay high fuel prices at the pumps. It is equally similar to this paradoxical situation: Like many other African countries, Ghana is swimming in a pool of natural resources yet sustainable development has been a mirage well over 60 years. Some other countries have less of such natural resources yet they are more developed than Ghana. Some of these countries even give loans to Ghana. How can the rich in natural resources rather continuously borrow from the poor in natural resources?

The other day for example, I read in the media about a lorry tyre factory President Nkrumah established somewhere in the Western Region, which is known for rubber production. Unfortunately, various political administrations of Ghana have abandoned this factory for years and Ghana continues to import lorry tyres, even to the extent of importing those that had already been used in other countries. The same mistake is being made by different crops of political leaders for over six decades after Ghana obtained political independence from Britain in March 1957. We keep marching our future away at the independence parades every year. But for the outbreak of a pandemic, we would have done so again in 2021. Are we going or we are coming? Are we not moving in gyration?

Back to the caption of the article. Every year, each car owner or driver in Ghana compulsorily pays roadworthy charges to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), which was legally established with Act 569 in 1999. The DVLA is an autonomous agency under the Ministry of Roads and Highways and a replacement of the erstwhile Vehicle Examination and Licensing Division (VELD) under the same Ministry.

According to Act 569, the object of the DVLA as a public institution is to “promote good driving standards in the country; and ensure the use of road worthy vehicles on the roads and in other public places.” In law, the object of an organisation means the legal purpose for which the organisation was established and for which it exists.

Accordingly, the object influences the phrasing of the organisation’s mission statement or mandate. It is in this regard that the DVLA’s mission statement inscribed on its official website reads, “To ensure best practices for licensing drivers and vehicles to promote road safety and environmental sustainability, while pursuing integrity, excellence, professionalism and reliability in service delivery.”

This is the mandate that makes the DVLA collect the roadworthy fees from motorists every year even in the face of deplorable or car unworthy roads. The DVLA ensures that the vehicles are worthy to be driven on bad roads. What a paradox? Must the collection of the roadworthy charges not be as important and a priority as the road construction and regular maintenance?

Another agency under the Ministry of Roads and Highways is the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) established by Act 567 of 1999. The NRSC also exists to “develop and promote road safety in Ghana and to co-ordinate policies in relation to them.” Coincidentally, both the DVLA and NRSC were established in the same year (1999) but with different Acts of Parliament. One may ask, how safe are Ghana’s roads and what happened to the road-related policies that the NRSC has been coordinating since 1999? (22 years ago).

Apart from the DVLA and the NRSC, the Ministry of Roads and Highways has other agencies/departments responsible for highways, urban as well as feeder roads yet the roads in most parts of the country are generally bad. Even though most of the roads and highways are bad and not car worthy, vehicle owners and drivers in Ghana ritually pay roadworthy charges to the DVLA every year. As if that is not enough, motorists pay road tolls daily and multiple times on a trip for driving roadworthy cars on roads and highways that are not car worthy. For example, we have been paying road tolls over the years on the Nkrumah-made Accra-Tema Motorway yet that Motorway is virtually a death trap. Mustn’t the DVLA stop collecting the roadworthy charges and must we continue to pay the road tolls?

The bad road situation in Ghana is similar to the deceptive looks of the white clouds in the sky; they look like bales of cotton yet when you approach them in an aircraft, they are nothing but gases and they are not touchable. We perceive that our roads are car worthy so we pay roadworthy charges for using the roadworthy cars on those bad roads.

Interestingly, the DVLA has a representative on the NRSC and the NRSC has a representative on the DVLA’s Governing Board. Suffice to say that these agencies in the road sub-sector of the economy work in unison yet the managers of the DVLA feign lack of knowledge of the vehicle unworthy roads and keep collecting annual roadworthy charges unjustly from car owners and drivers as a matter of law. It means that enforcement of the law happens without the enforcers taking cognisance of current societal situations. We pay all kinds of road levies in Ghana yet we drive on very bad roads. Why?

Perhaps we are waiting for another person to take the DVLA to court just as Anas Aremeyaw Anas did in April 2014 when he filed for mandamus and many other reliefs in court against the DVLA. Until the collection of the roadworthy charges by the DVLA goes simultaneously with the construction and coordinated preventive maintenance of the roads by its sector Ministry, the roadworthy charge collection is unjust and must stop.

~Asante Sana ~

Author: Philip Afeti Korto

Email: [email protected]

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