Minister calls for coordination of road projects

Accra, Nov. 6, GNA - Nii Armah Ashietey, the Greater Accra Regional Minister, on Friday called for co-ordination and harmonisation of road sector plans, programmes and projects with the metropolitan, municipal, district assemblies and the Regional Coordinating councils to make them effective for development.

He said selection and execution of road projects without the involvement of key stakeholders was administratively wrong and undemocrat= ic. Nii Ashietey made the call when addressing a forum of Metropolitan, Municipal, District Chief executives and stakeholders in the road sector for the Region in Accra.

He said the policy on transparency and accountability could not be achieved when stakeholders in the management and supervision of contracts=

and projects were sidelined.

The forum was organised by the Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council (GARCC) in collaboration with the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies in the Region to provide an opportunity for all stakeholders to contribute ideas towards harmonisation of the road sector=

programmes. It was also to acknowledge any peculiar experiences, good practices and priorities to ensure money for value in executing the projects. Nii Ashietey said in some cases the chief executives and the regiona= l ministers were not consulted on project identification and implementation= .. "The Regional Ministers and Chief Executives feel greatly embarrassed when projects are advertised, procured and awarded. This situation is not acceptable and very unsatisfactory".

He stressed on the importance of decentralisation in the democratisation and promotion of grassroots participation in decision making to ensure the transfer of planning, programming, budgeting and implementation of programmes and projects.

Ni Ashietey said experience had shown that assemblies that adopted strategies to decentralise most of the departments, performed creditably and urged the assemblies to endeavour to provide their own resources towards the development of the road sector and other development projects.

Mr. Ludwig Hesse, Project Advisory Officer, Department of Urban Road= s (DUR), said lack of political leadership, inadequate institutional framework, funding and the absence of clearly communicated vision, had affected the achievement of goals and objectives of the road sector. He said Ghana was facing huge problems in respect of road accessibility in urban areas because the increasing number of private transport did not correspond to the road networks, leading to massive congestions and huge road traffic. Mr Hesse said to eliminate these problems government had to invest in urban transport systems, providing the Urban Private Transport with the infrastructure to encourage private sector investment into bus and other mass transportation systems.

He said efforts were underway to institute an Urban Transport Project for bigger buses to replace the current large number of private and commercial vehicles with the provision of special side lanes solely for buses. "This idea has been successfully implemented in Lagos, Nigeria and would soon be operational in Ghana to help utilise the limited road infrastructure available, "he added.