Road contractors to maintain roads for 5 years

Henceforth road contractors will be made to maintain new roads that they have constructed for a period of five years instead of the current one year.

This, according to the Minister of Road and Highways, Mr Kwasi Amoako-Attah, would ensure that contractors executing the jobs would perform creditably.

Mr Amoako-Attah dropped the hint at this year’s annual performance review conference of the Department of Urban Roads in Koforidua, the Eastern Regional capital, last Tuesday.

Brainstorm

The two-day event which was on the theme: " Year of Roads - Improving Urban Accessibility, Safety and Reliability for National Development" and attended by engineers, quantity surveyors and other stakeholders in the sector was to brainstorm road construction aimed at ensuring quality work in road construction.

According to Mr Amoako-Attah, the new directive, which would come into force in a month’s time, conforms to the standards set by the World Bank on road construction and that would save the government extra expenditure on badly constructed roads in the country.

Value for money

“Government will no more use the taxpayer’s money to pay for jobs poorly executed by contractors because we have to ensure value for money”, Mr Amoako-Attah stated.

Unpaved roads

Mr Amoako-Attah stated that the country had 16,808 kilometres of urban roads network of which 70 per cent was good;16 per cent fair, and 14 per cent poor, while the unpaved ones had 15 per cent good, 23 per cent fair and 62 per cent poor.

He explained that although the paved network was good, there was the need for its improvement.

Touching on roads constructed between January 2017 and December 2019, the minister said 357 kilometres of asphalt overlay had been done in Accra, Tema, Koforidua, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi and Cape Coast.

Mr Amoako-Attah told the gathering that 98 kilometres of minor rehabilitation and upgrading of roads had been done for some towns including Adukrom, Tema, Oyarifa, Anaji, West Tanokrom, Walewale, Nalerigu, Ejisu, Nandom and Tamale.

Mr Amoako-Attah, who indicated that this year had been designated as the year of roads, said a lot had been done in that sector in most parts of the country.

Partial reconstruction

On partial reconstruction, the minister stated that 34 kilometres of such roads had been executed in some communities within Adjiriganor, Sekondi-Takoradi, Awukugua, Aperede and Accra while the first Traffic Management Centre (TMC) in the country, the first of its kind in the West African sub-region, was commissioned by the President in July 2019.

Regional Minister

The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Eric Kwakye Darfour, urged engineers in the country to help the minister ensure that the 2020 ‘Year of Roads’ declared by the President was achieved.

He admonished them to let determination be their guiding principle to succeed in their field of work and appealed to them not to lower the standard of the engineering profession.