The Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) National Secretariat in Accra has critically analysed and reviewed the recently presented 2021 budget by the government.
As a result of this, it is focusing on safeguarding the interest of transport operators in making a strong case for the increment of transport charges.
Godfred Abulbire Adogma, the General Secretary of the (GPRTU) addressing a section of the media on Tuesday said there hasn’t been any increments in transportation charges and fares for some time now even after one year since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said transport operators witnessed a huge fall in the picking and loading of passengers last year as a result of ensuring social distancing in public transport.
“Transport operators and particularly GPRTU also didn’t benefit from the COVID-19 stimulus packages as against other businesses and organizations that benefitted,” he expressed.
According to him, they happy and welcome the Vehicle Income Tax waiver announced in the 2021 budget but unfortunately the relief doesn’t cover all vehicles especially long-distance drivers and other commercial transports.
Also, he explained that there is no better time to increase transport fares than now since other factors such as automobile spare parts, DVLA charges among other petroleum products have been increased.
This, he identified, will obviously affect transport operators who are yet to make amends after making huge losses post -COVID-19.
“The GPRTU, is meeting the Minister of Transport and we are going to lay down all these concerns to the government because we are also incurring more costs considering the increments in port charges that have affected the prices of automobile spare parts. We believe it is time to share this burden with passengers.”
He further lamented that the running cost of transport operations is getting overwhelmingly expensive.
“Cost of operations will be expensive now and we think that we have to pass on some of the cost to the public in order not to cripple our businesses.”
