The Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwasi Amoako-Atta has reiterated the assurance President Akufo-Addo gave in 2017 that the Dikpe Bridge in the Lawra Municipality will be constructed.
He said the President has directed that three bridges, Dikpe in Upper West, Ankobra and Iture in the Western Region should be worked on as composite project. The cost for the 3 in 1 project is pegged at €65 million.
Mr Amoako Atta gave the assurance when he inspected some road projects as part of his duty tour of the Upper West Region.
Mr Amoako-Atta gave an insight into what is being done to actualize the construction of the three bridges : “I want to assure you on behalf of his Excellency, the President that the designs are ready, we have done all the ground work, we have picked all the inventories relating to the three bridges, we have done the costing, everything. In fact, cabinet memorandum is ready, cabinet memo is ready because we have had the mandate from the Ministry of Finance for the project.”
He continued that the cabinet memorandum will be approved and forwarded to parliament for approval and assured that the construction of the bridges, particularly the Dikpe brigde will start before the close of 2020.
The Paramount Chief of Lawra, Naa Puowelle Karbo was excited about the efforts being made to construct the Dikpe Bridge to link Burkina Faso.
He stated that with this bridge, there will be increased economic activity and social interaction between us.
“We cross there, we inter-marry, we go to funerals. They also come here to our funerals and markets and so on. So, it is so important that this vision of the president is carried out without any further delay,” Naa Karbo observed.
The Chief of Dikpe, Naa Alhaji Yussif Yatonl was equally on hand to lend support to the initiative to link his community to Burkina Faso with a bridge.
During the inspection of the roads, Mr Amoako-Atta made it clear that shoddy work will not be tolerated, saying the government will make sure that it gets value for money in the road sector.
The Minister commended the Managing Director of P&W Ghanem, Wadih Ghanem for the quality work his construction firm is executing in the country.
Mr. Amoako-Atta said: “I am so happy about what I’m seeing, I’m so happy. It is our prayer that God keeps you as long as possible. Once you are doing a good work for the people of this country and giving people value for money. And you are very honest principled person.”
“At least, the three and half years that I have worked with you, I’m not flattering you, you are a very serious principled honest person. You know, and I believe with these good works, there is no doubt my faith tells me God will keep you as long as possible to work for the good people of this country.”
The Ministry of Roads and Highways has 78 on-going projects in the Upper West Region with plans to execute 36 more with funding from the road fund.
The Region has a total road network of 5,798.1 kiliometres. Forty percent (40%) of the total road network is classified as good, 32% categorized as fair with the rest 28% rated as poor.
Story filed by Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo.
