Joseph Kofi Adda
THE Minister of Aviation, Joseph Kofi Adda, yesterday said the newly constructed airport in Ho, the Volta Regional capital, remained closed because local airlines had refused to fly to the place over “commercial reason”.
According to him, this has made it difficult to operationalize the airport which covers 1,500 acres of land with a passenger terminal and a 1,900-metre runway.
In December 2016, former President John Dramani Mahama hurriedly commissioned the uncompleted aerodrome project which started in September 2015. It was later completed by the Akufo-Addo government in 2018.
The airport has a terminal building with the capacity to serve about 400 passengers per day and 150,000 passengers per year. The area around the aerodrome was expected to be developed into an airport city.
Answering questions from members of the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday, the Aviation Minister revealed that the local airlines had refused to fly to the Ho Airport despite engagements with them, intimating that this is a concern to the government because of the funds sunk into the project and the service that it could provide to the nation.
“We have explored different things and different options of how to deal with that, but given that we don’t have our own airlines that we can, by policy, direct that they should be going there, it’s so difficult for you to negotiate with the commercial airlines (sic),” he stated.
He disclosed that even the Agbogbomefia and Overlord of the Asogli State, Togbe Afede XIV, who is a shareholder of Africa World Airlines, had been appealed to but to no avail. “We have talked to him to try and consider the possibility of going there,” he added.
Mr. Adda said similar appeals had also been made to Passion Air, another domestic airline of Ghana, to also consider going there, but indicated that “they have their own reasons. They look purely for commercial (interest).”
“We have considered other means in terms of how we can even get passengers for instance from the Ashanti zone who come to Aflao to trade to see if the airlines can fly them from Kumasi to Ho, which is a longer route than from Accra to Ho. These are things that we have explored. But it is difficult to say that tomorrow we’ll fly there,” he concluded.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House