The Wa Municipal Assembly says it is positioning itself strategically in order to merit an upgrade from a Municipal status to that of a Metropolitan Assembly.
The Assembly hopes to achieve this by improving on urban management while engineering a rapid infrastructural growth within its jurisdiction.
The over 40-million Ghana-Cedi infrastructural upgrade will be sponsored by the World Bank through the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development under the Ghana Secondary City Support Project (GSCSP).
The MCE for Wa, Alhaji Issahaku Tahiru Moomen briefing the press expressed excitement that the Wa Municipality is among other 25 Municipal Assemblies across the country to be chosen.
The Ghana Secondary City Support Program GSCSP is a successor to the Local Government Capacity Support Project.
The aim of the multi-million Ghana-Cedi Project is to improve institutional performance on urban management while also helping the 25 participating Municipal Assemblies to improve upon their basic urban services.
The five-year project is expected to begin in October this year with the construction of a six-million Ghana-Cedi two-storey 120 unit market stores fitted with access ways for the physically challenged.
There will also be a fire station, a conference room, places of convenience, two mechanised boreholes, six LED streetlight and a car park at Fadama in the heart of the central business district.
Other projects which would follow subsequently include the construction of another a six-million Ghana-Cedi two-storey 120 unit market stores at the new market area on the Dobile-Charia road with similar specification as the one to be built at Fadama.
Also included in the projects would be construction of a 5.9 kilometer rectangular storm drain along Konta-Dobile New Market Stream at an estimated 18 million Ghana-Cedi, construction and resurfacing of the Dobile New Market new Hospital Link Road with streets lights, pedestrian walkways and bus stops.
The rest are the construction of median strips with street light and pedestrian walkways on the J.J Rawlings High Street, construction of a 1 km road from Dobile Market to Mangu Link and the construction of a 1.25km road from Kambali Central Mosque to Dobile Link Road.
The MCE for Wa Municipal Alhaji Issahaku Tahiru Moomen explained that the project was to start in 2020 but was revised to begin this year adding that it their hope that the first phase of the project would be completed in before close of this year.
The MCE also gave the assurance that traders who will be displaced during the redevelopment of the market area at the Central Business District will not be charged for the stores when completed.
“There is no single person to be displaced because where we are going to put the structure is not the entirety of the land area of the Fadama area. It is only a cross section of the land that we are going to use. Even while we work, those who are not situated on the side we are going to work are going to continue to sit and do their normal businesses,” he explained.
He continued to say “we are going to profile all the people sitting down there [traders using the market area], register them and get their names and when its complete, we are going to bring all the people back and allocate the shops to them. The only issue is that they have to give us at least a space of three months for us to complete.”
Alhaji Issahaku Tahiru Moomen said steps have been taken to ensure there will not be a misappropriation of funds.
Story by Mark Smith
