Bolga-Bawku Road To See Upgrade

Paulina Abayage

The Upper East Regional Minister, Ms Paulina Abayage, is highly optimistic that the Bolgatanga-Bawku-Polmakom road in the Upper East Region will be completed as announced by the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, in the 2019 budget statement.

In her view, the Akufo-Addo government has the Upper East Region and its people at heart, and will “confine” all critics by the time the Bolgatanga-Bawku-Polmakom road and other developmental projects mentioned in the budget statement are completely executed.

According to her, the Bolgatanga-Bawku-Polmakom road is very important to the development and economy of the Upper East Region, especially as the road connects the following five districts to Bolgatanga: Nabdam, Bawku West, Binduri, Pusiga and Garu.

It also connects the entire region to two neighbouring countries – Burkina-Faso and Togo – for which reason it is important to the people of the region.

The Bolgatanga-Bawku-Polmakom road has two contractors working on it. They are Mawums Construction Limited, a Ghanaian company, and Queiro Galvao, a Brazilian company. The sod-cutting was done at the latter part of 2016.

Even though the Brazilian company has halted work on its portion of the road, the Ghanaian company, Mawums, is still working on its portion of the road.

According to the Upper East Regional Minister, the Brazilian contractor is reported to have complained about non-payment for some other projects (Kasoa Overpass, the Kwame Nkrumah Circle Interchange and some work at the Tamale Airport) that were executed under the erstwhile John Mahama government, for which reason it was hesitant to get back to work.

With the announcement by the Finance Minister in the 2019 budget statement presented to Parliament on Thursday, November 15, it is expected that Queiro Galvao will resume work soon. The company has a lot of workers, most of whom were recruited from the communities along the Bolgatanga-Bawku-Polmakom road.

The deplorable state of the road has been an issue for discussion on many radio stations and groupings in the Bolgatanga Municipality and the districts that are connected by the road. There have been agitations by some youth groups who keep threatening to embark on demonstrations, especially in the Bolgatanga Municipality to drum home their displeasure over the poor state of the road.

There have various angles to the discussions with members and communicators of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) claiming that the NDC government awarded the contract before leaving office in 2016. They have accused the NPP government of frustrating the Brazilian contractor, Queiro Galvao, by not releasing funds for the road construction to continue.

On the other hand, members and the communication team of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) claim the NDC only took the Brazilian contractor to the site just for propaganda purpose and never made any payment for the Bolgatanga-Bawku-Polmakom road project to commence until the NPP came to power to get the road project started.

It would be recalled that soon after the sod-cutting was done by former President Mahama in 2016, the contractor left the site with all equipment and returned in 2017.

The road has been a critical issue for the two parties in the Upper East Region and with the Finance Minister’s assurance people from the Upper East Region will be watching what will happen on the road in 2019.