‘Tweaaa Demo’ To Rock University Of Ghana …Over ‘Illegal’ Road Tolls

Students of the country’s premier university, the University of Ghana, are planning a massive show down with school authorities over new road toll charges.

Information gathered by The Chronicle indicate that students of the university are seething with anger over the new road   tolls, as it is adding to their already high cost of living on campus.

The University authorities on February 1, this year, began charging road tolls from all vehicles entering the main campus. Commercial vehicles operating within the university campus have subsequently reviewed their fares to reflect the tolls they have to pay to enter the university.

What seems to have hit the raw nerves of the students is the fact that students have not been exempted from the toll net, whereas Lecturers of the university, their dependents and senior staff have been spared from paying the tolls.

The students say all efforts to get the university authorities to at least exempt students from paying the road tolls have proved futile and they have thus resorted to using a “language that is best understood by the universities authorities”.

In furtherance of this, the students are ‘charging’, in wait of a massive “tweaaa demo” to express their displeasure at the turn of events on the campus.

University authorities have, however, explained that the tolls would help the university defray a loan facility it took to rehabilitate roads in the university.

This decision has received mixed reaction from the general public, many of whom are of the opinion that the university cannot charge road tolls without approval from parliament.

‘Under the Fees and Charges Act 2009, you don’t have the power to impose charges on anything without parliamentary approval.

‘The University is a public institution and not private…it was established by an act of parliament. Don’t start with an illegality,’ Mrs. Ursula Ekuful, Member of Parliament for Ablekuma West, had said in her commentary on the matter.

Earlier, Students of the university had petitioned Parliament against the introduction of the road tolls and to intervene in the matter.

Meanwhile, two students of the university have sued the school at the Supreme Court, over issues concerning the road tolls.

They are arguing that the action of the respondents had violated Article 174 (1) of the 1992 Constitution, because the tolls were introduced without an Act of Parliament.