Parliament has approved a facility agreement of £48,278,793.77 between government and the Standard Chartered Bank, London, to finance the design and delivery of prefabricated bridges for deployment throughout Ghana.
The request was presented to the House on June 23, 2020 by the Deputy Minister of Finance, Abena Osei-Asare, on behalf of the Minister of Finance.
Background
The Ministry of Roads and Highways is currently implementing a rigorous programme to improve the condition of the country’s road network and related facilities throughout Ghana.
The minister said under this programme, the road agencies, particularly the Department of Feeder Roads, is rehabilitating and upgrading weak or broken log bridges with short and medium span steel, composite bridges and the construction of major box culverts and bridges over water crossings to reduce the bottlenecks on the feeder road network.
The Chairman of the Finance Committee, Dr. Mark Assibey Yeboah, told the House that the Deputy Finance Minister indicated during the committee’s meeting that some sections of roads in a number of rural areas, including old wooden and steel bridges, are damaged, thereby making many roads impassable during the rainy season.
“This has, by and large, constrained socio-economic development,” he noted and added that governments over the years had implemented and continue to implement a number of road infrastructure projects to connect districts to municipalities and municipalities to metropolitan areas,” he said.
Presenting the report of the committee, the New Juaben South Member of Parliament (MP), said out of the feeder road network of about 42,045km, only 25,931km is engineered with good alignment and adequate drainage.
According to him, some of the projects include the Ghana-Dutch Bridges Project, the Ghana-Acrow Bridges Project, the Belgium Bridges Project and the Spanish Bridges project.
Government also implemented the “Road Sub-Sector Development Programme (RSDP)” from 2001 to June 2008 with support from the Arab Bank for the Economic Development of Africa (BADEA) where six major bridges were constructed.
The bridges are Aframso Bridge (ASR), Jomoro Bridge (ER), Ofoase Bridge (ER), Hiawa Bridge (ER), Bridge on Suskuliga River at Nayoko (NR) and Bridge on Tintaraga River at Ngane (NR).
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House