Transport operators to increase fares May 3

Transport fares are expected to go up by Monday, May 3 following hikes in petrol and diesel prices.

The Ghana Private Road  Transport Union (GPRTU) served notice of an approximately 15% price change.

A litre of petrol and diesel currently sell at GHS6.36 and GHS6.19 respectively.

According to the General Secretary of GPRTU, Godfred Abulbire Adogma, the union will release a statement by Wednesday.

“The price increase is obvious but the percentage that we will be increasing it by is what we are yet to discuss,” he said.

He said based on current factors, an increase in transport fares between 30 per cent and 40 per cent would have been ideal, but that may affect business, hence, the final decision would be lower than that.

“Even if we are given a free hand to come up with the new fares, we will not make any mistake to go beyond 15 per cent or even 20 per cent,” he said.

“Ours will come after Wednesday. We met [on Thursday] with the Transport Minister and we agreed that once there is this new rollout of new tariffs from 1st May, we just wait and get that percentage and add it up to our existing price build-up that we had calculated and now know by what margin we will increase fares.” he told Accra based Citi FM.

He said the GPRTU would ensure that the new fares “will not affect the general public so much.”