You Have No Powers To Suspend Road Tolls-Bagbin Directs Roads Minister To Reverse Orders

Thursday, 18th November 2021

Information coming from the house of legislation is that the speaker of parliament, Rt Hon. Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin has directed the Minister for roads and highways Hon. Akwasi Amoako Atta to reverse an order suspending payment of road tolls.

In giving the ruling in parliament today, the speaker said the minister had no powers to issue such orders when parliament had not yet approved the budget. According to a report filed by 3news.com, the speaker ruled that the order was void and directed the minister to do the honourable thing by issuing a statement to that effect.

The speaker cautioned that if the minister who is also a senior member of the house fails to do as he had ordered, it will amount to contempt of parliament which will attract sanctions.

“I want to clearly direct that what the Minister has released is complete Brutum Fulmen, it means it is an empty boast , it has no effect and therefore I call on him to honorably withdraw that directive. Failure to do so will be a serious breach of the directive of the speaker and that would amount to contempt of parliament.

“I think that it is proper for us to direct the minister, a member of this house, in fact a senior member of this house, I think that he might have acted wrongly and therefore I call on him to reverse this decision,” he ruled.

In reading the 2022 budget in parliament yesterday, the finance minister Hon. Ken Ofori Atta announced that government intended to stop the collection of road tolls in order to prevent road traffic congestion and littering along the roads. In place of that, the government planned to introduce electronic tax to raise funds for road constructions in Ghana.

Few hours after that announcement, the road minister issued a directive asking all toll booth attendants to vacate their posts by midnight. He further directed the police to take over all toll booths to ensure free flow of traffic.

CitizenOne will follow this issue up and keep followers updated.

CitizenOne

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