Work on the three-tier interchange at the Kwame Nkrumah circle might not meet the May, 2015 deadline due to the increasing trade activities around the construction site.
Several traders, after being ejected from their shops at the Nkrumah Circle, have now set up their structures under the flying beam and along the main road adjacent to the construction site to sell their goods.
Items being sold by traders at the Circle area include; second hand clothing, phones, food stuffs and electrical items.
Speaking to citifmonline.com, most of the traders insisted they have no intention of leaving the area as they had nowhere to go having been displaced prior to the destruction of the footbridge.
“They cannot sack us from here because the chief contractor gave us permission to sell here because he had pity on us. If they sack us, we will come back here because we cannot engage in armed robbery” – she said
Meanwhile, the Safety Officer at the site a contractor on site, Andrew Kofi Amoateng has warned that the refusal of the traders to move from the construction site could result in a possible delay of the project and has called on authorities to intervene since several attempts by contractors to relocate these traders have so far proved futile.
“We have sacked them several times, they go and come back again. When we ask the AMA to take their things away, they will go and bring them back here again. If something happens to them they will say it is the construction workers. This can affect our schedule because when you block something it is difficult for that thing to move forward.”
About the three-tier interchange at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle
The Kwame Nkrumah Circle is a key intersection in the major road network in Accra. About 84,000 vehicles use it daily and constitutes a key bottleneck in the major road network that links the suburban areas of Accra to the central business district.
The 74.88 million euro project is being jointly financed with credit from the Brazilian Government and the Ghana Government.
According to the project design, the first of the interchanges will link the Akasanoma Road to the Nsawam Road, around the Vodafone building.
The other interchange will link the Nsawam Road to the Nkrumah Avenue, around the Ghana Commercial Bank building, while the third interchange will link Ring Road Central to Ring Road West.
By: Benjamin Epton Owusu/citifmonline.com/Ghana