Prez. Akuffo Addo Prioritise Our Roads

Roads are everywhere and without it, commuting to destinations could have been something else. Roads play unique roles in the life of societies. The importance of roads are being appreciated irrespective of its nature and its distance, so far as it links innumerable people to their places safely.

Roads are also the key infrastructural input for economic growth process and they promote national integration too. Ghanaians have frequently expressed concern about the deplorable roads in the country and commended the government for the attention it is paying on our roads to reduce accidents in its barest minimum.

Annually, the government keeps on putting comprehensive measures to address the poor condition of roads across the country but still almost every road in the country is bad especially in rural areas.

Surprisingly, some of these roads were rehabilitated not long ago; they started deteriorating just within some months of their rehabilitation or construction. My advice to government now is to be courageous on-road inspections and ensure that contractors who do shoddy work are denied their payment and ineligibility of having access to work within this country.

Surely, Ghanaians are aware that roads should have a minimum period within which any deterioration is surcharged on the contractor. But we wonder whether this is adhered to, judging by the fast rate at which newly constructed roads develop potholes.

My observation is that we seem to consider only cars when we are designing our roads. We have failed to incorporate pedestrians’ safety facilities in our planning, design, construction, and maintenance of road infrastructure.

I entreat government, to adopt foreign methods of safeguarding carnage on roads so that road sign and provision of bicycle lanes and pedestrians walkways that we also have here in Ghana will help reduce the number of accidents involving cyclists, pedestrians and hawkers on our pavements as well.