Already, in January, this year, the assembly has indicated that it has collected GH¢19,910 from market tolls only.

This was made known to the Daily Graphic, when the Municipal Chief Executive of KoKMA, Samuel Adjei Tawiah, led a team of officials yesterday to enforce the payment of market tolls within the municipality.

The move was part of efforts by the assembly to shore up revenue to improve development within the municipality.

During the exercise, tolls were collected from traders at the Odawna market, traders selling in and around the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange as well as street hawkers.

A charge of GH¢2.50p daily toll was collected from the traders and GH¢2 from food vendors numbering about 2000 selling within the enclave.

Enforcement exercise

Mr Tawiah explained that the enforcement drive was necessitated by the government’s directive to allow the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to take charge of the collection of property rates.

He said there was, therefore, the need for the assembly to double up its revenue mobilisation to generate enough funds to support its operations.

“There are changes in revenue mobilisation this year, for instance, this year, the property rates would be collected by the GRA so it means we have to double up our efforts to improve our internally generated funds (IGF).

He indicated that they would embark on the enforcement exercise every Wednesday at the various markets within the municipality.

Improve sanitation

The MCE noted that the funds were needed to address and improve, among others, sanitation, security and build infrastructure such as markets for the municipality.

“The number of people and hawkers that come to the central business district means there is a lot of refuse created and we are spending huge sums of money to keep the environment clean,” he said.

Mr Tawiah expressed the assembly’s commitment to continue enforcing the collection while monitoring to ensure transparency.

He said they would also continue to educate the traders on the importance of paying their tolls to improve development in the municipality.

He, however, mentioned that there were challenges in ticketing such that people pass on old tickets, with others sharing their tickets.

“There are gaps in the ticketing and we are trying to go electronic so that we can avoid the passing on of tickets,” he noted.

He said they had also involved a third party in the collection of the toll to speed up revenue mobilisation.