News:
February 11, 2025
Immediate past Chairman of the Roads and Transport Committee, Kennedy Osei-Nyarko has taken a swipe at the Ministry of Roads and Highways for issuing a statement over the weekend suspending an Act of Parliament, the National Roads Authority 2024 Act 1118 that seeks to manage Ghana’s road infrastructure by merging the Ghana Highways Authority, Department of Urban Roads and Feeder Roads.
According to him, he is more shocked and down founded that the sector Minister Governs Kwame Agbodza who took former President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government to the cleaners for abolishing road tolls and made a lot of noise today in charge of the Roads sector is doing otherwise.
In an interview, he pointed out that if the Executive arm has an issue, they know the procedure; and what to do is to come to Parliament with an amendment of the portion they feel there is an issue with.
“I have picked information that the National Labour Commission, wrote to the Ministry to suspend the implementation, “Does an independent body have such powers? NLC is a creation by an Act passed by Parliament; if they think some workers are going to be affected they have two avenues to use; is either the affected workers should petition Parliament or they go to court to seek a review”.
He further advised the sector Minister to move cautiously stating that he is starting on a bad note and should withdraw the press release and apologize to Parliament and the people of Ghana for taking a decision he does not have power to take.
Mr Kennedy Osei-Nyarko further explained that the Act was to deal with some mischief, some challenges which have bedeviled the road sector for a very long time. “If you look at the Roads and Highways Ministry, there are about three key agencies – highways authority, urban roads, and feeder roads. They cannot be doing the same work, hence the need to merge them”.
We do not have enough resources to do everything; and because of resources constraints, we want to utilize the little resources we have. When you have a sector that duplicates the role of the other agencies, it delays projects and leads to insufficient maintenance on our road network.
So in the wisdom of the past government, they thought it wise they should come under one Authority which will deal with all these and it’s a very good thing having one Authority to manage all these three agencies, he added.
According to him, the idea behind passing this law was to know work schedules, adding that there was extensive consultation; “we spent a lot of resources, time and everything to pass this Act only for the new government led by its Minister to issue a press statement that it has suspended the implementation of an Act of Parliament.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com