Member of Parliament for Akim Swedru, Kennedy Osei Nyarko
The Chairman of the Roads and Transport Committee in Parliament who doubles as the MP for Akim Swedru, Kennedy Osei Nyarko, has stated that Ghana would need “16 solid years” in fixing all deplorable roads in Ghana.
The legislator says no government would be able to fix all deplorable roads in the country at the speed Ghanaians would want.
Appearing on Frontline on Rainbow Radio 87.5 FM, he said we would need more than $20 billion in fixing all deplorable roads in the country.
However, per our current situation as a country, we may not be able to get the resources in fixing our roads in the short term.
He believes we would need 16 years to achieve this aim and in doing so, we would have to be committed to fixing about 3,000 kilometers of poor roads in Ghana out of the existing poor roads.
Mr Osei Nyarko said even with that, we would have to use an average cost of bitumen surfacing of $400,000, then we would need an average cost of $1.2 billion in achieving that.
He added the government would have to budget $7 billion annually if this is what we want to achieve.
The former deputy attic minister went on to state that we have over 46,000 kilometers of roads that are in a deplorable state and we would have to work on them in 16 years.
“We have a problem. as a country. Look at the budget, how much do they put inside the budget for roads? I don’t blame successive governments because the money we get is what we use for roads and other development projects,” he said.
He was responding to a call by fix the country campaigners on the government to fix deplorable roads in Ghana.
The MP said fixing roads in Ghana is not as easy as buying bread on the market.
He asked people to stop politicizing road infrastructure in Ghana because if that was the case, then people should not be asking for roads to be fixed if former President John Dramani Mahama had done a better job.
“Fixing roads is not as easy as buying bread in the market. You need money to fix roads. We have fixed some and we are still fixing them. Our total road network is 78,401. Out of the figure, those in good condition is 41%. Fairly good and poor is 59% which needs to be fixed and tarred. The figure is over 46,000 kilometers. It will cost the nation $46,000 billion to fix these poor roads. Where do you expect the government to get the money to fix the poor roads in the shortest possible time?” he added.