Finance Ministry approves GH¢43.2m for Sekondi-Takoradi roads
The Ministry of Finance has approved GH¢43.2 million for the rehabilitation of three major roads in the twin-city of Sekondi-Takoradi in the Western Region.
The three roads are the bypass linking Nkroful Junction to Apremdo, the New Takoradi-town-Harbour roads and the Kokompe-Adakope road near the Takoradi Airport.
The youth of New Takoradi and spare parts dealers have embarked on a number of demonstrations to draw attention to the deplorable nature of the roads with an assault on the metropolitan chief executive and attack on journalists.
The demonstration embarked upon last July was to register their protest and how the bad roads were affecting business activities at Kokompe. The demonstrators blocked the road and set tyres ablaze preventing others from using the road.
In New Takoradi, the youth dug trenches across the road to prevent heavy duty trucks from crossing to the port and blowing dust into the community.
The rehabilitation of the roads, according to the Urban Roads Department, would involve providing them with asphaltic surface and construction of drains.
The Urban Roads Engineer, Mr William Donkor, told the Daily Graphic that the rehabilitation of the stretch of the road from the Nkroful-Junction to Apremdo Traffic Light was estimated to cost GH¢34 million and it would be a dual carriageway.
He said funding for the project had been approved and the contract awarded for work to commence.
For New Takoradi, he said, the rehabilitation work would include widening of the road by about eight metres to make room for the provision of safe pedestrian walkways. This would be done at an estimated cost of GH¢6 million.
Mr Donkor said the road would stretch from the Paa-Grant Roundabout towards New Takoradi to the railways level crossing and then continue towards the harbour bridge.
The estimated cost of rehabilitating the Kokompe road is GH¢3.2 million.
Aside the three major projects, he said, the department would improve the surface of several other portions of the roads in the metropolis such as the Effia-Nkwantah Junction, some link roads in Tanokrom and Effiekuma-Number 9 among others.
The urban road engineer said the contractors would not encounter any difficulties that would impede the smooth execution of the project.
He said the only challenge the contractor would face was that some people had encroached on portions of the Nkroful-Junction road area marked for expansion since most of the structures on it were temporal and not permanent and the people had been made aware of the intended rehabilitation of the road.
Source: Daily Graphic