A former Minister of Roads and Highways, Mr Inusah Fuseini, has said his successor, Mr Kwesi Amoako-Attah can be charged with causing financial loss to the state over his unilateral decision to collapse tollbooths across the country.
According to the former MP for Tamale Central, Mr Amoako-Attah cannot extricate himself from the charge.
“I’ll be surprised if the revenue loss at the tollbooth is not raised in the Auditor-General’s report for 2021”, he said, adding: “This must definitely be raised in the report of the Auditor-General”.
Speaking on Accra100.5FM’s morning show Ghana Yensom hosted by Kwame Obeng Sarkodie on Tuesday, 23 February 2022, Mr Fuseini noted that the Roads and Highways Minister’s decision was illegal because the decision to collapse the tollbooths must be taken by Parliament and not the sector minister.
“This is so because the Road Fund Act for the promulgation of charges of tolls was passed by Parliament,” he stressed, explaining: “It is the reason the finance minister, during the 2022 budget statement to Parliament, said tollbooths will be removed if the budget is passed”.
“The Finance Minister did not say it will be removed immediately.”
According to him, the budget was not for 2021 but for the year 2022 and the funds from the road tolls have been accounted for in the 2021 budget of the Ministry of Roads and Highways.
The former legislator, who is a lawyer by profession, explained that it was wrong for the minister to go ahead and remove the tollbooths when the 2022 budget had not been approved by Parliament.
He stressed that the decision to remove the tollbooths ought to have been taken to Parliament but the minister failed on that score.
He said Mr Amoako-Attah is a possible candidate for criminal prosecution, adding that criminal prosecutions have no time limit, maintaining that it can be done after the New Patriotic Party has been voted out of government.
