Work on the 7.5-kilometre Teshie-Lascala link road is set to resume after no significant construction work since 2016.
This is after the government paid half of the $35 million owed to Malin Investment, the firm contracted to work on the road.
[contextly_sidebar id=”Y4ns8AYgzEBJ1rXpfrCVrLCNJVxCjlFz”]Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show in February, Chief Executive Officer of Malin Investment, Francis Kpelu, said his firm had completed work on over 30 percent of the project.
But the company stopped in 2016 because four of the five certificates he sent to the government for payment, totalling GHc25 million had not been honoured.
The stretch of road connects Spintex Road to the Tema-Accra Beach Road.
It is in a feeder state and the source of high volumes of dust when there is vehicular traffic.
The Ministry of Roads and Highways expects the construction works to finish by December 2018.
Speaking to the media after a tour on the road, the sector minister, Kwesi Amoako Attah, said the government considers the road as key.
He expects work to resume within the next week and “the contractor has been clearly instructed to do that.”
“This is one of the strategic roads that has been identified by government and my ministry is under instruction to ensure that this road is fixed as soon as practicable.”
“We want to see this done within the next few months and I believe five or six months from now if we come back again, you will see a different story,” the Minister said.
MP’s crusade
The Member of Parliament for Ledzokuku Constituency, where the road is located, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, earlier lamented that his efforts to get the road fixed were proving futile.
“I wrote quite a number of letters and spoke to the Ministry that if they had any reason to delay this route, for the sake of patients at the LEKMA hospital, they have to act fast. I’ve written to the Minister, I’ve spoken to senior colleagues in Parliament.”
“I’ve spoken to superiors beyond the Minister, everywhere I go; I drop copies of the contract of the road telling them that it’s a 7.5-kilometer dual carriage road and that if they have a problem doing both, they should do just one.”
“You are supposed to spend just ten minutes from the Beach Road to Spintex, but now it will take you about one hour longer or more to ply that road,” the MP stated.-
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citinewsroom.com/Ghana