It is not clear to Yours Truly, precisely what makes the necessary restoration of toll booths on our major roads and highways a fiscally responsible national policy agenda one that is “a penny wise and a pound foolish” initiative that ought not to have been implemented, to begin with, let alone attempt to restore or resurrect, in the rather civically irresponsible opinion of Mr. Kofi Bentil, of the Accra-based IMANI-Africa Institute (See “Tollbooths: 'It doesn't make sense to waste an hour on roads just to pay 1Cedi' — Kofi Bentil” Modernghana.com 1/14/25).
In reality, what is inexcusably and downright absurd is the idea that, somehow, both private and commercial motorists can expect to have the use or easy access to first-rate quality and capital-intensive or fiscally prohibitive roads and highways throughout the country and not expect to pay a pesewa for the regular upkeep and the upgrade of these very roads and highways. This kind of civic and political irrationality does not happen anywhere in the world of civilized and socially responsible leaders and citizens, least of all leaders and citizens in the highly technological and industrially advanced economies such as Japan, the United States of America, Britain, France, Germany and The Netherlands, to list only a handful of the most obvious.
But, of course, it is perfectly understandable that the Senior Vice-President of the IMANI-Africa Institute would be decrying and be frustrated with the amount of time that it takes motorists queuing up daily to pay road tolls. So, perhaps, the renowned legal practitioner would have saved himself a lot of insults and calumny and the amused contempt of those of us who have traveled and lived on both sides of the Atlantic, by first researching the diversity of ways and methods in which tolls are collected in many a technologically advanced democracy, such as the use of the Non-Stop Electronic Ezzy-Pass System that is routinely used in most states hereabouts the United States of America, a system that has absolutely no need for manual and time-consuming toll-collection system of the kind that the critic stridently complains about, and instead make accessible an optional combination of both the Manual and the Ezzy-Pass toll-collection system.
With the latter system, motorists are issued a Velcro-attached Electronically Sensored Matchbox-like Toll-Payment Pass or Ticket which they adhesively stick onto their front windshield and automatically gets their road tolls deducted from these electronically sensored passes which may be regularly replenished via the use of one’s credit card from the website of the Department or the Ministry of Road Transport, in the case of Ghana, or have such payments automatically deducted from one’s credit card and transferred onto one’s Ezzy-Pass matchbox, anytime that funds in the latter box reaches below a predetermined minimum level.
Vis-a-vis the Ezzy-Pass System, as a motorist drives on the highway, often at the foot of a major bridge or passageway, they go under a “Gantry” with a multiplicity of flashing cameras that act as both toll-collection machines and/or agents, as well as capture the make or model and the license registration plate numbers of motorists who violate toll-payment policy by not displaying their Ezzy-Passes or deliberately attempting to evade this most significant and fundamental expression of the civic duty and responsibility for the development of their country. Failure to pay road tolls is punishable by a hefty punitive fine or an imprisonment or both. There is absolutely no joking with one’s road-toll obligation hereabouts in the United States of America. Taxes, in general, to be certain.
Naturally, the installation of the Electronic Toll Booth System is apt to cost a lot of money but over the long haul, this system is apt to pay for itself many times over and then some, as New Yorkers are wont to say. Then also, there is another inventive and time-saving aspect for relatively well-heeled motorists like Mr. Bentil, who would be enabled to just zoom through the Ezzy-Pass System by paying one additional cedi or two for the temporal convenience that such a rapid toll-collection system optionally affords. Those who find the Ezzy-Pass Express System rather much too expensive would still have the traditional or the regular and standard option of queuing up to tough out the slow temporal grind.
Now, what this writer finds to be characteristically interesting and, perhaps, even peculiar about Ghanaian citizens, irrespective of class or professional background, is this scandalously crude streak of hermetic narcissism that churlishly reckons the value or the functional utility of every policy initiative, especially where some modicum of fiscal responsibility is involved, almost exclusively in terms of one’s personal benefit rather than the greater good of the social collective or The Commonwealth.
The comical irony here, though, inheres in the fact that it was in a bid to making hay out of an otherwise perfectly normal and civically responsible fiscal policy initiative, such as the toll collection on our roads and highways, in the runup to the 2020 General Election, if Yours Truly recalls accurately, that caused an understandably jittery Akufo-Addo Administration to scrap this progressive policy initiative altogether. Now, did it really require Finance Minister-Designate Cassiel Ato Baah Forson to secure a doctorate in Finance and Economics from the University of Ghana to take us, literally, back to Square One?
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
January 14, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]