Ghanaian lawmakers have slammed poor management of the processes that have led to what some have called the calamitous closure of the Adomi Bridge to allow for extensive repair works.
According to the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA), the two-year-long repair works will cost Ghana an estimated €13 million.
In the aftermath of the closure of the Adomi Bridge at Atimpoku, drivers and passengers have been facing various problems in their bid to move to and from the Eastern and the Volta regions of the country.
Reports say one of the two pontoons purchased by the Ministry of Roads and Highways to convey vehicles, people and goods across the Volta Lake has developed a technical fault, compelling officials to have it grounded.
The only pontoon working at the site ferries around 200 passengers per trip, together with 300 tonnes of cargo. The state of affairs has triggered heavy vehicular and human traffic at both banks of the Volta River at Atimpoku and Akrade. Also, vehicle owners have reportedly hiked transport fares by ridiculous margins provoking public anger.
Reports suggest that private boat owners are cashing in on the chaos by perilously ferrying travelers across the largest man-made lake which is notorious for calamitous boat accidents in dinghies and small canoes powered by outboard mottors. The situation has provoked strong public criticism of the handlers of the nation’s road sector.
At Thursday’s sitting of Parliament, MPs also lambasted the Ministry of Roads and Highways as well as allied road sector agencies for as one MP put it “failing to do their duty,” thereby creating chaos on the Accra-Ho corridor.
The wave of anger provoked among MPs by the fallouts from the closure of the Adomi Bridge compelled the Speaker, Edward Doe Adjaho, to order the Parliamentary Committee on Roads and Highways to move to the site to investigate the problems.
He also issued a direct order to the Minister of Roads and Highways to appear before the House to “brief” MPs on the Adomi Bridge repair works.
In his words, “I want to direct that the Business Committee [of Parliament] arrange for the Minister to brief the House. Secondly, I direct that the Select Committee on Roads and Transport should move to the site tomorrow…”
Earlier, a member of the Majority group read a statement in which he highlighted the “chaos” triggered by the closure of the bridge.
“Mr. Speaker, this demonstration of lack of proper planning and consultation prior to the implementation of [such a] major project, especially if it causes disruption to the people’s economic activities must not be tolerated,” the Adaklu MP, Kwame Agbodza, said in a written statement he read on the floor.
He went on, “People who serve this country must put the public first. We can do better [than] the current situation”.
Since Monday, the Ghana Highways Authority has shut the Adomi Bridge to vehicular traffic in a move to carry out extensive repair works expected to finish in 24 months.
As part of processes leading up to the closure, authorities had promised to make alternative arrangements to allow vehicles that use the corridor to cross the Volta Lake seamlessly via ferries. The Ministry of Roads therefore purchased two ferries to transport vehicles, travelers and good across the Volta Lake.
But, the Adaklu MP told Parliament Thursday that poor planning ahead of the closure of the bridge has so far exposed travelers “to health hazards.”
“Mr. Speaker, we also have reports of individuals taking advantage of the desperate situation to charge exorbitant fees for services such as places of convenience, shelter from the weather and parking spaces,” the Adaklu MP added.
“One would think that we would have made the necessary arrangements to minimize the extent of disruption and hardship to be brought on the public during the closure.
“Mr. Speaker, we were told that as part of the processes leading to the closure of the bridge, two main alternative arrangements were made. The first is to provide a ferry to facilitate the crossing from Senchi to Old Akradi. The second alternative is to rehabilitate the road from Ho through Adaklu to Sogakope.
“Mr Speaker, the road from Ho through Adaklu to Adidome has been under construction since 2010 and is still not completed, especially the section in Adaklu. This is not only creating a major health hazard to the people but also making travel very unpleasant to motorists”.
According to the MP, because the ferry that has been provided by the Ministry is not operational 24 hours, passenger cars have “to pay 12 cedis each to be ferried across the river”.
North Tongu MP, Samuel Okudjeto Ablakwa also expressed outrage over the chaos created by the poor planning that heralded the closure of the bridge and asked that Parliament should “step in to prevent what may be a calamity”.
He said, “…There is untold hardship, there is tension, there is a looming conflict and if care is not taken this thing will degenerate into something else. And as MP for the area I am deeply worried about how the engineers have proceeded to implement this closure of the bridge and the alternative arrangements which have been made. It is not the best…”
Sekondi MP, Papa Owusu Ankomah, echoed the North Tongu MP on his feet. “The Honorable Member for North Tongu has raised some issues about failure of consultation. Incidentally, he is also a member of Government. So if as a Member of Parliament of the area and a member of government, he has raised these issues, then it means that there is serious lack of consultation among and between institutions of government”.
He added, “We must appreciate that we can do things in a way that will minimize unnecessary complaints even though what we are doing is well meaning and is in the right direction.”
In his view, Government needed to have briefed Parliament ahead of the closure of the Adomi Bridge. He added, “I am urging the Ministry of Roads and Transport; together with other agencies involved in infrastructure to brief this house at a point in the future as to the state of our infrastructure, particularly the strategic ones”.
A deputy Minority Chief Whip, Ignatius Baffour Awuah also highlighted the suffering imposed on commuters as a result of the closure of the bridge. He said, “All users of that road should not suffer unduly… It is no fault of theirs that the bridge should collapse. It is no fault of theirs that for two years they cannot use their approved routes because we are doing a maintenance program on that”.
Afadjato South MP, Joseph Amenowode, also expressed misgivings about how road sector authorities have so far handled the closure of the bridge. “We were informed that individuals have taken it upon themselves and are charging about 2 Ghana cedis per vehicle, which is not the best. Ghana Highways Authority should have known that there would be a backlog of cars and prepared for this,” he said.
In his contribution to the statement, Shai Osudoku MP, David Tetteh Assuming, warned that if the crisis triggered by the closure of the bridge could degenerate into massive “food shortages” since the bridge, which is on the nation’s eastern corridor road network, serves as a major link, connecting the North of Ghana to the South.
He added: “If care is not taken, I believe that there will be shortage of food and that will lead to rise in prices of food stuffs”.
Assumeng, who is also the Chairman of Parliament’s Works and Housing Committee, also urged the Ministry for Roads and Highways “to speed up work on the proposed construction of a third bridge downstream of the Adomi Bridge …to alleviate the suffering of the people”.
The idea to construct a suspension bridge [in the 1950s] the first of its kind in Ghana, then the Gold Coast, came out of the fact that the Volta Region and to some extent some parts of the Eastern Region were cut off from the rest of Ghana. Prior to the construction of the bridge travelers to and from those parts Ghana had to cross the Volta Lake on boats at Senchi.
The Adomi Bridge was therefore built across the Lake at Atimpoku up north of Senchi in 1956 to ease the burden of travelers. The designing of the bridge was done by two firms; Sir William Halcrow and partners and Freeman Fox and partners and built by Dorman Long Bridge Engineering Limited.
According to officials, the bridge has, for five decades, provided enormous services to the people of Ghana. The Ghana Highways Authority estimates that one some 120,000 workers, traders and tourists cross the Volta River using the bridge on a daily basis. It is also estimated that on the average, more than 3,000 vehicles of all sizes cross the bridge daily.
By: Richard Dela Sky/citifmonline.com/Ghana