Toll booth Collectors Sacked

By Samuel Boadi

UNDER THE pretext of reorganising the revenue collection process at the various toll booths across country, the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) has dismissed all toll booth collectors effective February 13, 2010.

Information available to DAILY GUIDE from an inside source at GHA said the authority has recruited what it termed a task force made up of supposedly NDC actvists to do the collection henceforth.

“It is only supervisors of the toll booths, who are staff of GHA, that have been asked to remain at post,” the source stated adding “the supervisors have been asked to give adequate training to the new toll collectors.”

But the directive has been met with a stiff protest from the aggrieved collectors since the news got to them.

“We could not believe our ears when the news was broken to us last week. Most of us have worked at the booths for so many years. What pains us most is that during power outages, we stay at post without any security and collect tolls using our cell phone torches,” a collector who asked to be unspecified told DAILY GUIDE.

The collector recounted how they have had to sleep under trees around the Kasoa tollbooth after they close from work so they could report back to duty in the evening. According to them, some of them stay around Madina, Tema and far away places so if they should go home after work, it would be impossible to return to work on time in the evening.

Asked why they have resisted the take-over by the task force, they indicated that GHA has been indebted to them since April 2009.

“We received our last salary in April 2009. From May 2009 to January 2010, we have not received our salaries. We were just fortunate to receive our August and September salaries in December and since then, no one have told us anything about the remaining payments only to be told last Friday that we are to go home.”

According to them, it had to take the intervention of the Kasoa MCE to cool down tempers of the about 32 collectors at the Kasoa toll booth when they heard about the dismissal.

“We are not vacating our posts till we have been paid all our salaries and other entitlements.”

Asked how much they received as salaries, they said it ranged between GH¢140 and GH¢170. The collectors added that initially when they were been recruited, after they had received a 3 week training, they were told they would be paid GH¢250.

Collectors at Dodowa, Ayi Mensa, Nsawam, Kasoa, Afienya and other regions have therefore asked the GHA to ensure that proper thing was done even it intended to go ahead with its replacement with NDC activists.

“We just want GHA to respect our rights and accord us the necessary entitlements. At least they should honourably send us home. It should not be in such ‘insulting’ manner.”

They have additionally stated they would present the issue to Parliament to look into the issue.

As at the time of going to press, all efforts to get either the public relations officer or acting chief executive of GHA, E. Aboagye, to comment on the issue proved futile.