Nkrumah Circle Tourist Interchange: �74 Million Down The Drain

Today can confirm that while work on the main job of the �74 million Kwame Nkrumah Circle Interchange re-construction is nowhere near completion, there are already signs that the Brazilian company undertaking the project, Queiroz Galvao, will ultimately, hand Ghana a badly-finished job. Investigations by this paper show that if works already completed in auxiliary aspects of the project were anything to go by, then the country should be ready to be handed a shoddy job. The auxiliary works, Today learnt were done on some streets that feed and take traffic away from the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, which is situated between Adabraka-Odorna and Kokomlemle, suburbs of Accra. The works, our investigation team further learnt were done on portions of Kojo Thompson Road, Akasanoma Road, Kwame Nkrumah and Farrar Avenues. A deep throat source at the construction site told Today that �even the main construction work of the interchange is of low quality and waste of money by the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC)�. According to the sources, one did not need to be a geodetic engineer or architectural engineer before he or she would know that the whole construction was waste of funds. �After all, some of us have in the recent past seen the good quality works done by other international construction companies� the source asserted. Today gathered that, the contractor completed all the auxiliary works about a week ago. However, our investigation discovered that, the finished works did not only lack professional touch, but also represented glaring instance of shoddy work to even the lay to construction. For instance, freshly laid-on macadam surfaces Today can report looked rough as if were laid five years ago by children playing (what Ga siblings refer to as) ntokoklo (or make-believe games,) while the middle of some of the streets were showing clear separation lines where separately-laid mats of macadam met. An influential resident of Adabraka who spoke to Today on condition of anonymity added that the edges of long stretches of some of the laid macadam, especially on junctions, were also roughly done indicating poor finishing arising, most likely, from lack of professional competence on the part of the contractor. He recounted that, during the Rawlings era, Ghanaians saw good quality works and professional finishing touches by contractors, like Dutch-Ghanaian Construction Pioneers; German Limex-Bau , Bilfinger+Berger, and; Arab ABU. �� And during the Kufuor era, we saw equally good quality works with professional finishing touches by firms, such as Isreali Sonitra, who used a Japanese loan-converted-to-grant to construct the Mallam-Kasoa portion of the Accra-Cape Coast section of the Africa Continental Highway� he recounted. �If the good quality of finishing by those international contractors are the yardstick, then the quality of work done in the auxiliary works to the Nkrumah Circle Interchange project are downright shoddy, and if such shoddy work is anything to go by then Ghana is actually (already) pouring money down the drain� he averred. To this end, he called on the Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing, Alhaji Dauda Collins as a matter of urgency, to visit the site to see things for himself. According to some residents at Adabraka, the auxiliary works were done mainly at night under flood lights. They explained that, the auxiliary works started with the scrapping of the street surfaces, which were then abandoned for weeks before finally in January (this year), the macadam resurfacing was done. When Today spoke to pedestrians and some residents on the streets, most of them lamented the poor quality of work wondering whether this was the value for which Ghana was spending �74 million. It would be recalled that when President John Dramani Mahama on October 28, 2013 broke ground for the new Kwame Nkrumah Circle interchange construction to commence, he announced that, the project would cost �74.88 million. Though he did not give the percentage components, President Mahama pointed out that it would be partly financed by credit from Brazil and partly by the Government of Ghana. And in response to parliamentary minority enquiries on what had happened to the proceeds of the �1 billion bond Ghana sold on international financial markets, the Mahama administration told Ghanaians that it was using part of the amount to finance the Circle Interchange project. President Mahama did not also miss the chance when commissioning the Kpong Water Supply Expansion project on December 23, 2013, to announce that� Kwame Nkrumah Circle has become a tourist centre as a result of the on-going re-construction of the interchange�. Meanwhile, the project which is being undertaken by Brazilian firm, Queiroz Galvao, is expected to be completed in 24 months.