A recent tour by the Divisional Chief of Prestea-Himan Traditional Area in the Western Region, Nana Nteboah Prah IV, to inspect ongoing Prestea-Himan inner-city roads project has exposed non-proper standard on the road from the Prestea Golf Park linking the Prestea township cemetery.
The road is being constructed by the Chinese construction firm, Power Construction Corporation of China Limited (POWERCHINA).
The chief who has been instrumental in the awarding of the Prestea-Himan inner city roads project, an initiative under the US$ 2 billion government of Ghana and Sinohydro Master Project Agreement, noted that he was interested in seeing to it that the ongoing roads project within Prestea-Himan township is not fraught with any shoddy works which could derail its future lifespan.
The Master Project Support Agreement between the Government of Ghana and Sinohydro of China was reached in 2017.
It was later approved by Parliament, and two sets of contracts were laid before Parliament.
The two contracts were the “Engineering Procurement Construction contracts (EPC), and the Deferred Payment Agreements (DPA).
Under the first tranche, a number of roads have been earmarked for construction for which the people of Prestea-Himan is a beneficiary.
However, the chief and his entourage in the tour of the project have raised a red flag over non-space nature of the road from the Prestea Golf Park to the Prestea township cemetery and have urgently drawn the attention of the officials at the Department of Unban Roads in Takoradi to impress upon the construction company to fix the problem by way of spacing out the road to 7.5 metres large standard.
According to him, they believe that allowing the company to reduce the road from its natural state of 7.5 metres to 7 metres space large before starting its construction work would be a “disaster for the people in the area.”
“If the construction company wants to go 7 metres by 7 metres space large to construct the roads project in Prestea-Himan township then that one we think that it cannot be a laudable after it is done” the chief further stressed.
“Being the chief of the area, l want to state clearly that l will not allow shoddy road work to be done in the on-going construction of inner city roads within the Prestea-Himan townhsip just because we are hungry for roads,” Nana Nteboah Prah IV made this known in an inclusive interview with Today when this reporter embarked on a fact-finding mission on the roads within Prestea-Himan Traditional Area.
Nana Nteboah Prah IV said that he was very passionate about development of the road networks from Bogoso to Prestea-Himan including all roads within the Prestea-Himan, noting that the road network projects have been one of their banes.
That, according to him, was because initially the road networks from Bogoso-Prestea and Prestea-Himan township had developed cracks and big potholes, to the extent that a driver would have to exercise much caution in plying on the road, to avert an accident.
He pointed out that the ongoing inner-city roads project was as a result of demonstration he led the residents including motorists and passengers in 2011 under the former President John Dramani Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration to raise concerns over the precarious and deplorable state of the road linking Bogoso and Prestea as well roads within Prestea-Himan.
According to him, “it was their responsibility to commit ourselves to ensure that no shoddy works are done and proper or good standards of the road construction system are duly followed.