The bumper-to-bumper traffic jam experienced in the early hours of the morning coupled with massive hawking was missing at the Kasoa-Accra and Ashaiman-Accra tollbooths in the Central and Greater Accra Regions, respectively, a day after finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta announced the scrapping of all tollbooths in the country when he presented the 2022 budget to parliament on Wednesday, 17 November 2021.
According to the hawkers, who leverage the go-slow created at the tollbooths to sell in traffic, they were not informed about the decision.
They contested that the decision to remove the tollbooths should have been done after the Christmas festivities.
The hawkers took to the ‘Ghana Yensom’ morning show of Thursday, November 18, hosted by Kwame Appiah Kubi on Accra100.5 FM to express their disappointment at the decision.
They argued that they have gone to collect wares from their suppliers with the hope to sell them and pay off their loans but now that tollbooths have been removed, they are wondering how they are going to survive and clear their debt.
“The tollbooths have been here since time immemorial and it will not take President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to change it,” a hawker at Ashaiman said.
“The Ashaiman tollbooth has been here since the reign of late President Kwame Nkrumah,” he added.
The Member of Parliament for the Bortianor-Ngleshie-Amanfrom Constituency in the Greater Accra Region, Mr Sylvester Tetteh, who was at the tollbooth to monitor the implementation of the tollbooth closure on Thursday morning, told Accra FM that he was there to sympathise with the affected hawkers.
According to him, every new policy receives satisfaction from the people it will benefit and dissatisfaction from the people it will affect.
“It is in view of this, as MP for the area, that I’m here to sympathise with the affected hawkers to find ways to help them,” he said.
He pledged to support the affected hawkers financially to enable them to continue to fend for themselves.
He assured them that together with the MCE for the Ga South Municipal Assembly, he will find ways to provide the affected persons with skills.
“We are looking for alternative street markets for the affected hawkers around the tollbooths”, he said.
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