Commentary

Calls to renegotiate transport fares to ease financial burden

By Elvis Darko a Journalist

After negotiations with stakeholders, road transport operators have agreed to increase public transport fares by 15%, which took effect from Saturday, February 26, 2022. Transport Unions said the decision was taken in line with the administrative arrangement on public transport fares and in consideration of the plight of drivers and the high cost of items associated with their work. The Unions said due to current trends on the international market and its impact on domestic prices, they had resolved with stakeholders to review transport fares whenever the cumulative net effect is 10% or more.

The fares cover shared taxis, intra-city (trotro) and intercity (long distance). In this regard, all commercial transport operators are required to comply with the new fares and post the same at their ‘loading’ terminals. They have also requested all operators, commuters and the public to cooperate for the successful implementation of the new fares.

With the dominance of the private sector in the urban mass transportation service provision, fares charged have always been a source of controversy due to the objective of the service providers. Transport operators, especially those in the private sector, have always complained of operating at a loss because of the low fares they charge while consumers, on the other hand, have also complained that the fares they pay are too high. In Ghana, the pricing of road transport carrier services, especially in the private sector, has been a persistent problem for all stakeholders in the transport sector and characterized by indiscriminate fare increases. This phenomenon keeps reoccurring year after year, suggesting that there is no way forward, especially when there are reviews in fuel prices.

This indiscriminate pricing system always leads to other problems, like high food prices, high inflation, with recorded cases of very nasty quarrels and violence between commercial drivers, their assistants and passengers.

The reason has been that the urban mass transport services serve most people in the urban areas, especially the low and middle-income earners.

This group of people consider this form of transport mode as the only affordable means of commuting. This goes a long way to affect productivity since most workers use these means to get to their workplaces.

Factors that affect the cost of providing urban transport services are tyre, insurance, fuel, trip distance overhead cost, hours worked, lubricant cost and cost of spare parts and maintenance. What this latest transport fare increase is going to do is to hike prices of all goods and services. The 15% increase will worsen the plight of the overworked, underpaid and consequently, underfed Ghanaian workers. In a country where transport fares impact directly on prices of all goods and services, hiking transport fares by as much as 15% is going to worsen the suffering of the ordinary Ghanaian and subsequently cause people to look for other means of supporting themselves. It is surprising how the government through the ministry of transport is unable to negotiate an adjustment of about 5 percent especially when this same government did not show sympathy for the Ghanaian worker when it decided to increase the minimum wage.

Seriously speaking the cost of living has become unbearable because salaried workers with let say a family of 4 is unable to fend for them coupled with the cost of rent in urban cities. If we have to go on our knees to cause the government to go back to the negotiation table to reserve this transport fare directive we will do without hesitation.