The Minority in Parliament has chastised the Roads and Highways Minister, Kwasi Amoako-Atta, for peddling what it calls “deception” with regard to the NPP government’s achievements in the road sector.
According to the Ranking Member on the Roads and Transport Committee, Governs Agbodza, the government has only repackaged roads it could not complete before 2020 into so-called new projects to be delivered.
The Minister for Roads and Highways, Mr. Kwasi Amoako-Atta, has said the second term of the Nana Addo government will see to the completion of 20 interchanges nationwide by the end of 2024, and some 120 bridges.
“Mark me down, by 2024, 20 interchanges will likely be completed”, Mr. Amoako-Atta announced at a media engagement on Sunday, May 23, 2021.
According to the Minister, the plan, when achieved, will be an unprecedented feat in the country’s history.
“By the end of our second term, 20 interchanges in our country would have been built, we have estimated 25, but we are convinced and sure, and we know what we are about…because we have programmed whatever we are doing, and we would have had about 25 interchanges in our country. This has never happened in any administration since independence”, the Roads Minister assured.
Responding to the issues raised by the Roads and Highways Minister, Mr. Agbodza said the government cannot construct 20 new interchanges as promised in the current tenure.
According to him, these are projects that should have been completed in President Akufo-Addo’s first term that have been repackaged.
“Today, we are going to be talking about projects the Minister says were done in their first term and those that will be done in this their second term. He indicated that there about some 11,000 kilometres and 6,000 kilometres would be done between now and 2024. We in the Minority feel that is woefully inadequate and that they could do more based on the quantum of resources that have been available to this government.”
“We would have been happy if the Minister said which of the projects they completed within four years of the President Akufo-Addo regime, but that information is very scanty, so basically what he did was to repackage the same projects which should have been completed by the end of 2020, and pretended that those are projects they are going to complete by the end of 2024.”
