George Asante, commutations manager of Metro Mass Transit Company (MMT) has proposed the establishment of a regulatory body to oversee the activities of the transport sector.
This comes after several passengers got stranded on Monday (6 December) due to strike of commercial drivers over fuel cost in the Greater Accra Region.
Speaking on an interview with Asaase Radio, Asante said, “GPRTU will just say we are charging this amount, we are not going here, and we are embarking on a strike. If there is a regulatory body, I believe there will be a system to check those things. At the end of the day, the people that do suffer in all of this are the ordinary people.”
“Those that have to move from their homes to their various places of work, and you wake up thinking you would have a bus or a car to take you to your workplace only to find out the people are striking.”
Asante added, “You know ECG, Ghana Water Company, and other utility service operators because there is a regulatory body, they cannot be seen to be exploiting the people. But in the case of the transport, we do not have such a body where all the road transport or vehicles, our operations and activities will be checked and controlled by that body so I am particularly concerned.
“I think that is a system we need to put in place so that going forward some of these things can be controlled or checked.”
Asante said that if there is a regulatory body set up for the transport sector, the body will control all activities of the transport sector and the service operators will not react as and when they feel like.
He added, “When there is a regulator, the regulator’s core mandate is to supervise, regulate all the agencies placed under it and I just made reference to the PURC and the agencies under them.
“As a consumer of electricity, when a bill is submitted to you and you feel that bill is too much for you, there is a regulator to petition just to look into the bill; and that is what we should have with our transport system. It’s a huge sector so you cannot just leave the sector under the current operators. I think the government has to step in.”
Beverley Andoh
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