Sunyani MoMo vendors appeal for more education on E-levy

Mobile Money (MoMo) Vendors in the Sunyani Municipality have appealed to the government to give adequate education on the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-levy) for the public to understand its operations.

The appeal came through interviews conducted by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) among some MoMo vendors within the municipality and its environs.

The implementation of the E-levy started on Sunday, May 1, 2022 with mixed reactions from the public, but the vendors believed more education needed to be done for the people to be better informed that “the E-levy charges are reasonable.”

That, the vendors said, would demystify the misconception and misinformation being propagated particularly by the opponents of the Government about it.

In his view, Kwame Amoako of Healing Jesus Enterprise told the GNA, though his daily customers had dropped from 70 to 40, the expectation by customers who came to transact business that exorbitant fees would be charged had minimized, unlike before the implementation.

''The MoMo system has been part of us and doing away with it is not easy, but the sensitization did not get down well with the people because most still harboured that perception of high E-levy charges and such notions must be cleared by the government'', he said.

Kaizer Sekyiwaa of Theophilus Enterprise also said she had not been affected much in terms of customers’ patronage, but she noticed more withdrawals were made on the Saturday, April 30 before May 01 implementation date.

Another vendor, Francis Fosu Jnr. of K. Jabaa Ventures said since the implementation of the E-levy, the majority of the transactions had been withdrawals, saying customers were not transferring monies and cited that between the hours of 0730 and 1130, only two customers had come to make money transfer, which was unusual.

Rakiya Sebah of Yelkoba Ventures stated the patronage had been low because her daily customers had reduced to around 40 instead of not less than 60 and attributed the situation to some of the people's lack proper understanding about how the E-levy system was being operated.

Some of the vendors also quizzed if the issue was about inadequate education of the populace.

‘What are the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and the Information Services Department (ISD) doing if their primary mandates, among others, are to educate the masses about Government policies and programmes?” they asked.