Engineer Abdulai Mahama, a Project Manager for Comptran Engineering & Planning Associates, has enlightened Ghanaians on the significant contributions local assemblies in the country must play to ensure efficient development and constructions of roads.
According to him, the Land Use and Spacial Planning Act, 2016 has enshrined great power unto officers of local assemblies with regards to road infrastructures.
Speaking during this year’s Happy Development Dialogue themed, “Improving Ghana’s road infrastructure through sustained innovative technical and financial engineering,” the civil engineering indicated that the oversight on the part of assembly leaders to ensure the enforcement of the act contributes huge losses to the public funds.
“I always say local assemblies in Ghana have to play a major role with road constructions. The more you do roads with less structures and buildings to demolish, you save a lot of money. So the Assembly has been given so much law under the Land Use and Spatial Planning Act (2016) that indicates that the ‘Officer may enforce notification to the developer, utter and abate to remove or demolish a structure if that structure is considered a nuisance to the environment or public right or space. So if the Assembly decides to overlook these things then they are causing huge financial loss to the country,” he told Don Kwabena Prah, host of the Happy Development Dialogue.
Ing. Mahama again shared distress with regards to inappropriate structures mounted in close range to some roads as he believes poses danger to motorists who plough such roads.
“Now you go on the Kasoa road, getting to the Sama stretch there is a massive gas plant building on going. They are about 20-50 meters close to the road and these are huge plants. This made me very worried more so because they are government entities. The cost of the plant structures I saw there can take care of road construction from Takoradi to Cape Coast,”
With that, Ing. Mahama further quizzed the feasibility of the sector minister’s decision to create multi lanes for some major roads that extends to the country’s borders as he disclosed that by-pass lanes along those extensions do not work.