Immediately withdraw the 15% increment on fares - COPEC 'orders' Transport Ministry

Following the announcement of a 15 percent increment in transport fares starting Saturday, July 11, 2020, the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) has asked the Transport Ministry to immediately rescind its decision.

According to the Executive Secretary of COPEC, Duncan Amoah, the new directive which was announced by Deputy Transport Minister, Titus Glover and yet to be rolled out is unjustified.

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The dictatorial role played by the transport ministry he said, only aggravates the burden of commercial vehicle drivers since fuel prices keep surging.

In an exclusive interview with GhanaWeb, he said “whatever increases should be halted immediately forthwith and let us find a more lasting solution than these increases”.

“Things only go up in this country without a corresponding remedy to bring it down when the factors or conditions necessitate it coming down and that for us is problematic and so we do not support these increases we are seeing. We think it is unjustified, we think that any attempt to also twist the arms of these drivers from their 20%, 30% or 50% by the ministry cannot be grounded in law because you are not bearing their input cost so you cannot bear their output numbers equally by determining 15%,” he added.

Dr. Amoah advised that the Ministry needs a comprehensive database on transport operators to be able to devise a lasting solution that specifically meets their needs to stop drivers from always demonstrating to get their pleas heard.

“A section of the drivers say they won’t agree so there’s chaos and we think that this chaos could have easily been resolved if the government had built a comprehensive database that allows the government to target the public transport operators,” he said.