President Akufo-Addo is steadily making good his ‘Year of Roads’ pledge to the people of Ghana. Not only is the project an inter-regional highway affair but an intra-urban task being executed with the seriousness the subject deserves.
So much has been written and said about the highways across the country, but not similarly for the intra-urban setting roads.
Some of the roads in the cities, especially in Accra, are so bad that it is amazing that successive governments have ignored them.
The residents of the Ayawaso North Municipality of the Greater Accra Region woke up on Saturday morning to discover that the roads in some parts of the municipality have been asphalted.
As for motorists who for instance use the road adjoining the Kotobabi Police Station as it heads towards the Mamobi Polyclinic, they had cause to be excited and thankful for the brains behind the reversal of the state of the streets from poor to excellent.
The road from the government health facility in the municipality from the main Pig Farm road used to be one of the most deteriorated in the nation’s capital. That has changed overnight.
When a government makes good a pledge such as being witnessed about the state of the bad roads in Accra, it is heartwarming. Indeed considering the cost of asphalting, we cannot but join the teeming motorists and residents to congratulate the President, the Greater Accra Regional Minister and others whose efforts have led to the transformation of the negative state of roads in Accra to their current state and still counting.
The cost of asphalting of roads, the worldwide trend today, is expensive.
The negative impact of COVID-19 on the country’s economy has not halted government’s budgeted projects, including for instance the intercity and intra-city roads.
It is surprising however, in spite of such feats some have preferred to tread on the path of lie-peddling.
With such tangible developments it would appear that such persons would have evolve fresh methods of plying their versions of propaganda. Under the circumstances, we wonder how a politician intent on spreading falsehood can describe freshly asphalted roads as pothole-riddled. Only those who can regard a ram as a bull and expect sensible persons to believe them can try this crap.
We do not know when the project would reach the Ga West Municipal Assembly. Amasaman is one of the fastest growing suburbs of the nation’s capital but whose internal roads need attention. The 3-Junction Road as it winds its way to Odumase, for instance, needs attention given its importance as a link road. Its current state is horrible. It is our prayer that the road upgrade gravy train would soon reach that part of the city.
Residents should be restrained from undertaking constructing speed ramps on the freshly asphalted roads. These developments spoil the roads. Perhaps the engineers should with the help of the assemblies determine where such ramps should be constructed.
Those who construct speed ramps on their own should be arrested and charged for destroying public property.
Mechanics who put up fitting workshops on such roads should be stopped because the dripping lubricants damage the asphalts.