‘Plans underway to relocate tollbooths at Tuba junction’

The Ga South Municipal Assembly is taking steps for the tollbooths at the Tuba junction on the Kasoa-Mallam Road to be relocated from its present location.

It said it had done a lot of work to get the tollbooths relocated to, among other things, deal with the problem of traffic and hawkers whose activities contribute to the pollution of the Densu River.

“I can tell you people in confidence that we have written to the ministry to get the tollbooths removed from where it is. We should have gone to a meeting on the issue two weeks ago to meet the minister but we are still on it,” the Ga South MCE, Mr Joseph Nyarni Stephen, said at a meeting with residents of Top Town at Ngleshie Amanfro.

It was to, among other things, discuss ways at which the assembly and the residents would work together to develop the area. The lack of drains and good road networks, among other things, are some of the problems in the area.

Mr Stephen said although the assembly was yet to settle on where the tolbooths were to be located, discussions were still ongoing on the issue.

“Our stakeholders have proposed some places but for now I don’t want to mention them now. Our intention is to relocate the tollbooths. We have spoken to a lot of stakeholders on the issue and we are still on it,” he said.

Shift system

The MCE said a major objective of the assembly was to abolish the shift system in basic schools in the area.

In pursuit of that, he said the assembly was putting up more school buildings to cater for the large number of schoolchildren.

According to him, the shift system, under which one group of students attended school in the morning and another group of students in the afternoon, had resulted in truancy on the part of some students, adding that the assembly did not want that to continue, hence the steps it had taken to put up more infrastructure to accommodate all the students at a go.

Mr Stephen said the assembly had now resolved to put up school infrastructure ‘vertically rather than horizontally’ to make adequate use of the lands that were available.

To address the problem of children walking long distances from American Farm and beyond to attend school at Amanfro, he said the sod had been cut for the construction of a school infrastructure at the St Francis Catholic Church at American Farm while another facility was expected to be put up in the Zongo area.

“My vision is to end the shift system in this municipality. It is going to be a tall order but we are going to do it.

Roads

“The road issue is our biggest problem in the municipality. Our drainage system is very poor, our road network too is very poor. We have about 1,102 kilometres of roads in the area. We have a huge problem; we want the roads to be passable. The whole area has been captured. We are only waiting for funding, and once that comes we would do all the gutters and the roads,” adding that as a former assembly member, he was aware of all the problems in the area.

Mr Stephen implored the people to pay taxes promptly for the assembly to undertake more development projects, adding that the meeting would not be the first or the last, but they would continue to interact with residents.

He charged the residents to report people who were not doing the right thing in the area for action to be taken.