A proposed Legislative Instrument requiring vehicle owners to pay compulsory towing fee has been shot down as a daylight robbery, which should not happen.
Prof. Clement Dzidonu, President of Accra Institute of Technology, adding to a groundswell of opposition to the proposal said the current problem with abandoned broken down vehicles on the roads, which is necessitating the L.I can easily be tackled by just disciplining the society.
The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) introduced the service in order to rid the country’s roads of broken down vehicles that are abandoned on the roads which advocates say accounts for a large proposition of road accidents. As part of the law, vehicle owners will pay compulsory annual fees, tied to the acquisition of road worthy certificate, to cater for towing services.
But Prof. Dzidonu told Bright Nana Amfoh on TV3 New Day Saturday that car owners should be charged as and when their cars break down.
This, he suggested, could be a daily charge depending on how long the car is left unclaimed by the owner after being towed. In cases where the car owners fail to show up within a stipulated time, the cars can be sold to pay off the towing services.
By implementing just that, he argued, “all those broken down cars would be off the streets; no question about that. So you don’t solve a problem of efficiency and incompetency by throwing money at it”.
Prof. Dzidonu further expressed his indignation, saying, “it beats my mind why these people will introduce a levy to solve a problem which they could have solved in a disciplined way…
“For me it is a daylight robbery, it is as clear as that: the money we will raise would be more than the number of cars to tow”.
Having studied what is required under the services, he concluded, “it breaks all principles: willing buyer, willing payer, it breaks the principle of just, fairness, and breaks the principle that he who benefit from the service must pay for the service.”
For Abraham Amaliba, a member of the opposition NDC legal team, the levy in its current state is a clear “rip-off”
He explained, “it is a rip-off because some people will not benefit” if the service provider is not able to deploy towing vehicles to every party of the country.
“There must be better way of doing it so that people would not be shortchanged,” he advised.
A leading member of the Convention People’s Party, Mr. Kwame Jantuah and the NPP Member of Parliament for Akuapem South, O.B Amoah also shared almost similar concerns.
O.B. however noted that if education had gone on well the opposition to the levy would not have been that massive.
By Isaac Essel | 3news.com | Ghana
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