Tamale-Salaga road needs attention

Drivers and Commuters who ply the main road linking Tamale, the Northern Regional Capital to Salaga, capital of the East Gonja District, are now running out of patience over the deplorable state of the Tamale-Salaga-Makango road, which has claimed about 20 lives this year alone. It is common knowledge that the road network in the whole of the north is nothing good to talk about.

This has, therefore, worsened the poverty situation of the people and affected the development of the area. Apart from Tamale, Yendi, Savelugu and Walewale, none of the twenty districts in the Northern Region have tarred roads. Meanwhile, the region contributes about forty-five percent to national food security.

Successive governments have failed to work on the roads to enhance the lives of the people. The Chronicle assessment on the road in question has discovered that about 86 kilometers of it is completely inaccessible. This is giving both commercial and private vehicles a hell of time.

Apart from the regular accidents on the road, passengers onboard the Metro Mass Transport and other commercial buses are always offloaded to reduce the weight of the vehicles, before they can cross some muddy areas.

Though officials of the East Gonja District Assembly, the youth and some school children within the communities along the road are doing their best to repair portions of the road, the situation is still nothing good to write home about.

Our information is that the Tamale-Salaga-Makango has always been captured in the national budget, but nothing had been done to connect the area to the regional capital of Tamale.

The Chronicle is aware of the enormous pressure on our budget, especially in the roads sector, but leaving this particular road to deteriorate to the level it has reached is not the best.

We are, therefore, appealing to the Minister of Road and Highways, Mr. Joe Gidisu, to go to the aid of the people by at least awarding the most deteriorated portions on contract, for surface dressing.

We should not be sitting idle whilst innocent lives are being lost through preventable accidents.