By Eugene Davis
The Minister of Roads and Highways, Kwasi Amoako-Attah, has stated that he is ready to subject himself to a bi-partisan committee to probe his sector as being able to construct the most roads in the history of the country.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo declared that his administration has built more roads than any other government in Ghana’s 4th Republic history.
Delivering the State-of-the-Nation address in Parliament last Wednesday, March 8, President Akufo-Addo said the majority of monies borrowed have gone into the construction of roads.
“I am proud of the amount of work that we have done, especially in the road sector. Roads constitute the largest number of questions asked in this House by Members of Parliament; a large amount of the monies we borrow are for road construction. Shall we dare stop constructing roads?”
Contributing to the debate on the State-of-the-Nation’s Address at parliament house on Wednesday, Mr. Amoako-Attah stated that the President’s statement on constructing more roads than any government under the 4th republic was “uncontestable, undisputed, and above all the statement is verifiable.
“I challenge any member of this House, country, I can go further to request that if anybody is in doubt, this House can set up an independent bi-partisan committee to investigate my ministry, the facts of the data and the president under his leadership has done more work in the road sector and it outshines any other government.”
Further, he added many more road projects are going to be added between now and 2024, and “by the time the president leaves office, the people of this country will be amazed at the level of infrastructure.
“Roads are being constructed in the 16 regions of our country; roads are being constructed in over 260 districts of our country. if we talk about road infrastructure, we talking about activities like surface dressing, interchanges, building of bridges and culverts, asphalt overlays and graveling, which are all periodic activities in the road sector and again we talk about routine activities in the sector.
The minority caucus in Parliament has described as erroneous and misrepresentation claims by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo during the State of the Nation address to have built more roads than any other government under the Fourth Republic.
Contributing to the SONA debate, the Member of Parliament for Ho West, Emmanuel Kwesi Bedzrah indicated that the government’s six years in office have only done 15,000kilometres of roads and that there is no justification that they have constructed more roads than any government.
He revealed that the total network of road in 2017 was 78,402km and cumulatively in 2022 was 94,203, stressing that within six years the NPP government has only done 15,000km representing just 16percent of the total road network in the country.
“If you look at Volta region roads, it is very pathetic -when you have 6,728km of roads in the volta region and you have done a paltry 407.15km in your six year tenure, this is discriminatory.”
The President said his government had built a total of 11,000 kilometres of roads since assuming office in 2017.
