The industrial relations officer for the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), Abass Imoro says the Union’s resolution to reduce lorry fares is on compassionate grounds and not solely the outcome of the Ministry of Transport’s meeting with the leadership of the various Driver Unions.
Mr Imoro said the union feels the plight of the travelling public and only thought it wise to reduce fares as the price of fuel is also falling proportionately.
“We considered reducing lorry fares because of the reduction in fuel prices. We thought it wise to reduce it to 15 percent which we strongly believe will be an Xmas bonus to all our clients.”
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Friday, December 16, Mr Imoro explained that: “The Transport Ministry was expecting more than what we have just come out with, and we were also not prepared to go by their demand. This is because, we demonstrated to them that as we speak, there is a very big deficit between the fuel increment from some period up to now and the lorry fares that we also charged from that period up to now, so the passengers are also owing us a lot but what can we do? The passengers are our relatives so we had to do whatever we had to do to sanitize the relationship between us. So we have decided to decrease lorry fares by 15.3 percent effective December 19.”
Touching on the longevity of the reduction, he said “the price of lorry fares will remain reduced but if they [the Government] come out tomorrow and increase the fuel price to an extent where we have to change the lorry fares, why won’t we change ours too?”
He was also optimistic that their members will comply with the new fare proposal because “if you place a vehicle at the station and nobody patronizes it, you have no business, and it will even be a loss.”