Our Road Contractors Exposed?

The onset on the rains has once again exposed the shoddy works executed by some of our road contractors. Some of the roads in Accra, which were awarded on contract and executed just two years ago, have all of a sudden developed potholes, thus making driving on them very difficult. While the state spent millions of cedis in constructing and repairing these roads, their life span are always not guaranteed. During the reign of Joe Gidisu as Minister of Roads and Highways, The Chronicle drew his attention to apparent shoddy work being executed by a contractor working on the Odoi Tsui Street at Dzorwulu, which passes under the high tension lines. After the contractor had put the first layer on the road, there was a heavy downpour which wiped off some of the gravels and created potholes. Surprisingly, instead of leveling the road surface again, the contractor instead decided to fill the potholes that had been created and then tarred the roads. As a result of this conduct by the contractor, the newly constructed road that should have had an even surface rather became rough. After the recent rains, this road has virtually become un-motorable. We are sure this contractor who executed the job had long been paid his money. But Mr. Gidisu at the time told The Chronicle that the contractor had only laid only the first layer and that after the second layer the road surface would become smooth, a claim which was never done. Now the government is going to spend another huge sum of money to reconstruct the aforementioned road. The Chronicle does not think such reckless dissipation of state resources would help this country. We are, therefore, appealing to the Department of Urban Roads to strengthen its supervisory department to ensure that urban roads awarded on contract are well executed. The kind of shoddy works we are seeing would always force government to come out with funds to reconstruct roads that should have taken a longer period to reconstruct. The Chronicle also wishes to congratulate the Ghana Highway Authority for issuing public warning against those who have erected bill boards on some of our major roads and intersections, which obstruct the vision of the road users especially drivers. We, however, wish to point it out that the bill boards are not the only problem on our highways. The metal railings or crash barriers erected in the median of the roads and along valleys are meant to achieve specific purposes. Unfortunately, whenever a car or lorry runs into these crash barriers and destroy them, they are never restored, thus posing danger to road users. This development is common on the George Walker Bush Motorway, the Tema Motorway itself and other major roads in the country. In some cases, scrap dealers take advantage of the situation and remove the railings on the entire stretch. Once upon a time, The Chronicle saw scrap dealers removing one of these railings on the N1 highway and drove quickly to inform police officers stationed at the Apenkwa Interchange, but the enthusiasm to quickly follow the lead was not seen in them. Whilst calling for collaboration with the Ghana Police Service to deal with some of these issues, the GHA also has the responsibility to ensure the prompt repairs of these railings so that it would not fall prey to scrap dealers.