The Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) has pointed out that the completion of the Drobo-Sampa road in the Brong-Ahafo Region should be a priority for the government if it intends to promote inter-regional trade.
The 56-kilometre road, which was awarded in May 2007 with construction beginning in 2012, has been left to deteriorate over the years, although it had reached various stages of completion.
Rehabilitating the poor state of the local road network that links Ghana and La Cote d’Ivoire implies that additional funds are required to top up the initial contract sum of GH?41 million, as a whopping GH?100 million oil cash was allegedly used by the previous administration to buy votes.
PIAC described the road condition as “another disappointing use of oil revenue, not in terms of the selected project, but lack of priority attention to see to its completion.”
Speaking to journalists after inspecting the road, chairman of the committee, Dr Steve Manteaw, said unless something is done quickly to save the situation, the nation risks seeing large swathes of the 73.5 per cent completed road network dangerously strewn with potholes and becoming unmotorable.
“We see that the engineer and the contractors have done a good job because most portions of the roads we drove on have either prima seal or first seal, but they have lasted for years.
“They are now beginning to deteriorate, which means that if we were mindful to allocate resources to complete it, this road would have lasted very long,” Mr Manteaw noted.
Ing. Fredrick Aduagyei, Brong-Ahafo Regional Highways Director, indicated that weather conditions of many years had caused quite a dramatic surface damage at specific locations of the road.
According to him, those cracked and battered lanes can be repaired for the first and final layers to be put on.
From Ernest Kofi Adu, Sampa-B/A