GPHA to build satellite truck village
The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) will, as part of a World Bank project, soon start the construction of a satellite truck village at Ashaiman to provide adequate transit parking area for haulage trucks waiting to load from the port.
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Facilities at the village will include parking areas for trucks and vehicles, documentation, processing facility, hostel facility, cafeteria and maintenance facility.
Haulage trucks now park indiscriminately along the streets of the harbour city.
On completion, the truck village will serve as a safe and secure truck park for haulage trucks, ease the much talked about vehicular congestion around the port and also facilitate transit trade through Ghana.
The Director General of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA), Mr Richard Abugri Anamoo, who was giving an overview of ongoing projects of the GPHA, in an interview with the Daily Graphic at Tema, said drivers who failed to comply with the law by registering at the truck village would not be allowed to enter the port.
Mr Anamoo said an ongoing US$122million construction of a bulk cargo handling jetty at the Tema port would increase the capacity of the port and provide additional berths with the view to reducing waiting time for vessels.
He said the dredging of the Tema fishing harbour canoe basin and wreck removal was completed in May 2013, at the cost of US$2.4million to enable the fishermen to have a safe working environment.
He confirmed that the GPHA had undertaken about fifteen major projects between 2010 and 2013, These included upgrade, expansion and dredging works, acquisition of various equipment and installation of Optical Character Recognition System (OCR) to control pilfering at the ports.
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Mr Anamoo explained that the objectives of those expansion projects were to enable the port to safely take in modern, bigger and deep-drafted vessels, reduce ship turnaround time and provide a service and logistics base for the oil fields.
He stated that a 197million Euro construction works at the Takoradi port funded by a KBC bank loan from Belgium, which started in 2012, was due to be completed in 2016.
These, according to him, included a 1.08km breakwater extension, reclamation works, dredging and a bulk cargo handling berths for manganese, bauxite and clinker.
Additional facilities being provided for the Sekondi ABS Fishing Harbour are lay-by wharf of 160 meters, a fish net-mending area, an ice plant to produce 30 tons per day and a fuel dispensing station for fishing vessels at a cost of US$25million.Funding is from the Japanese government.
When completed, the project will provide additional berthing facilities and promote conducive atmosphere for fishing activities.