Road transport operators to be regulated
An independent institution to regulate the operations of road transport companies in the country is to be established by the first half of next year.
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The organisation will be called the Road Transport Regulatory Authority and will operate along the lines of the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), Ghana Civil Aviation Authority and the Ghana Railway Development Authority (GRDA), which regulate the activities of companies operating in the aviation, maritime and railway sub-sectors of transport respectively.
The Director of Road Transport at the Ministry of Transport, Mr Robert Kumi, disclosed this to the GRAPHIC BUSINESS on October 31.
“If you look at all the other sub-sectors of transport, you would realise that there are regulatory bodies for all of them except for roads. What we now want to do is to set up a similar one for the road sector and that institution will be responsible for setting standards for the operators,” he said.
News on the establishment of the authority was first announced by the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Seth Terkper, when he presented the 2013 budget statement to Parliament earlier this year.
On the state of that announcement, the Director of Road Transport at the Transport Ministry said a bill on proposed Road Regulatory Authority was due to be presented to the Attorney General’s Department for review and onward forwarding to Cabinet.
“We have consulted with all the relevant institutions and came out with the draft. One the draft is finalised, then we should be setting it up by the middle of next year,” Mr Kumi said.
He admitted the establishment of the institution was long overdue but said it was better late than never.
“If it comes into being, it will help sanitise the system,” he added.
By Maxwell Adombila Akalaare/Graphic Business/Ghana
