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Emission Levy Is Injustice On Ghanaians – Environmentalist
Mr. Daryl Bosu, the Deputy National Director of A Rocha Ghana has describes the new Emission Levy tax as fraud against Ghanaians.
According to him, the imposition of the Emissions Levy Act, 2023 (Act 1112) on Ghanaians is unjust because Ghana as a developing country, has least emission levels which does not warrant taxation.
Mr. Daryl noted that, on the global front, taxes and emissions levy is only applied to developed countries since emission is peak in such countries.
He added that the government is perpetuating an injustice with the emission levy when it has recognised on international platforms like COP28 that Ghana is amongst the countries with the least contribution to climate change.
He said, “Our government has been on these international platforms talking about just climate transition and the need to ensure that even if we have to really pay for something, you need to recognise that some countries are least developed and so should not be responsible.”
Speaking on Ghana Tonight on TV3 on Wednesday, 31st January 2024, the environmentalist said, “That has been our major problem with this levy. The fact that it is not recognising that we in Ghana are least responsible for the emission…we talk about climate just transition and all that when we go out there but when we come home, we actually perpetuate an injustice where we actually tax our people for something that we are not responsible for and this is where we think that the law is fraud,”
Mr. Bosu, however, believes that the emission levy is a “replicate of the Sanitation and Pollution levy” which is charged on petroleum and diesel purposely meant to address issues of air quality and pollution.
He suggests that, if the government is serious about dealing with emissions, then it must enforce the ‘cap and tray’ scheme.
This, he explained by saying “where for particular sectors you set a threshold and say that as an entity within this particular sector do not emit beyond this threshold. If you do, then we are forced to tax you. That would have been better than setting a blanket tax for almost every citizen