Roads Minister requests for 1,000 more staff for Ministry
Mr Kwame Governs Agbodza, the Minister for Roads and Highways, said the Ministry has requested the recruitment of about 1,000 additional staff to strengthen operations and address widening personnel gaps across road sector agencies.
Appearing before Parliament’s Economy and Development Committee public hearing in Parliament House on Wednesday, the Minister said the request was submitted by the Ministry’s Chief Director in response to growing staffing pressures.
“Mr, Chairman, the creation of six new regions without a corresponding increase in staffing for road agencies has left key technical departments overstretched,” he said.
“The demand for additional personnel has become necessary due to the expansion of administrative regions without a corresponding increase in staffing for road agencies,” the Minister explained.
Mr Agbodza, also the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Adaklu, noted that engineers and quality assurance personnel were particularly stretched, affecting the efficiency of project supervision and delivery.
The situation, he said, was worse in newly created regions where institutional capacity remained weak.
The Minister stressed that current staffing levels were insufficient to meet demands of ongoing infrastructure projects nationwide.
“Mr Chairman, the staffing level of the agencies is far less than what it should be. If you consider the fact that we are investing heavily on these projects, part of the reason some of the projects suffer quality assurance is simply because we don’t have enough people to monitor these projects,” he told the Committee.
Mr Agbodza said government had earlier approved 137 staff at various levels for the Ghana Highways Authority alone, covering quantity surveyors, engineers and other technical roles. However, the Chief Director has since submitted a fresh request for about 1,000 personnel to address gaps across all agencies.
“We have got approval for 137 staff at various level, QSEs, engineers and everything, but that was just for highways. The chief director has since submitted a request for about 1,000, because don’t forget, we created six new regions and didn’t actually staff them with new staff,” he added.
The Minister assured Parliament that efforts were underway to address the staffing challenges and improve the operational capacity of the Ministry and its agencies.
He emphasised that addressing the personnel gap was critical to strengthening monitoring, ensuring quality assurance, and enhancing overall service delivery in the road sector.
The recruitment request is currently under consideration by the relevant government agencies.
Source: GNA