News:
May 25, 2021
Ranking Member on the Road and Highways Committee, Kwame Governs Agbodza said the road components of the Sinohydro programme of government is a failure, and advised government to look for something else to help improve the road infrastructure in the country.
Reacting to the Minister of Roads and Highways’ press briefing, Mr. Agbodza indicated that the Sinohydro project, the road component which is about 441 kilometers were all supposed to be completed by the end of 2020, but not a single one of them have been completed in the four years that they have been in government, and yet the Road Minster has repackaged them, and saying that those are going to be part of the 6000 kilometers of roads that they are going to do.
“We still insist that the Sinohydro, the road component is a failure and the government must look for something else to do about it”.
He said the about 11000 kilometers of roads programme, and 6000 that the minister said would be done between now and 2024, is woefully inadequate, adding that the government could do more based on the quantum of resources that have been given to this government.
“We would have been happier if the minister told you, or told the country which of the projects they completed within four years of President Akufo-Addo’s regime, but that information is very scanty, so basically what he has done is to repackage the same projects which should have been completed by the end of 2020 and pretending that those are the projects they are going to complete in 2024.
He said for majority of the sinohydro roads, the contractors have not even move to site, adding that the only project that has advanced a bit is the Tamale interchange, the rest are nowhere near completion.
And wondered how the Minister was going to finance all the projects he talked about during the press briefing considering the fact that the entire budgetary allocation for the Ministry is 2.4 billion, and just about 1billion is allocated for capital investment, “so how is the minister going to pay for the billions of projects he is talking about out of one billion”.
“The NDC believes in accelerated infrastructure development, that is why they build a lot when in government and support initiatives towards infrastructure development when not in government.
“In this house you will notice that perhaps 95 percent of bills brought to this house to procure projects to improve the living standards of this country by the New Patriotic Party, we have always supported it. It is only when we find problems with them that we query them, and we are not happy to say that on many occasions when we query them and they fail to listen, we all get into trouble, Sinohydro is one good example”, he said.
Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com