President inspects road equipment

President John Dramani Mahama last Friday inspected new equipment procured by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) for use in a new road and sanitation improvement programme.

The ministry is rolling out the programme to boost road infrastructure in the rural areas, and sanitation in both the urban and rural areas.

The equipment included 20 tipper trucks, 10 excavators, 20 wheel loaders and five bulldozers.

They would be divided into three lots and stationed in three depots - northern, middle and southern depots. 

District assemblies that want road improvement could contact the depots and have the equipment moved to the site to undertake the work.

President Mahama said one important aspect of the road intervention was the provision of vehicles to send mechanics to undertake after sales service of equipment.

Infrastructure drawback

Much as he expressed delight about the strides being made to advance infrastructure development in the country, the President said one of the major drawbacks was the nature of roads.

"We have had several interventions in the past but there is still a lot more that needs to be done," he said.

He explained that one of the reasons for the drawback was that "in the past we allowed the district assemblies to purchase their own road development equipment such as graders and trucks, but the servicing back up was not the best so when the equipment broke down they could not be fixed," he added.

The new programme is expected to correct the mistakes of the past. 

Previous programmes 

President Mahama said the programme would add up to two other interventions by government.

The other interventions are the $150 million cocoa roads programme to span the next five years, and the budget of the roads ministry amounting to GH¢500 million every year.

These would ensure access to the rural areas and enable farmers to evacuate their food crops to the buying centres to reduce post-harvest losses.

President Mahama said the MLGRD was not taking over the functions of the roads ministry but was playing a supplementary role.

He commended the ministry for instituting the National Sanitation Day but said it would not serve the purpose “if we don’t change our attitude towards sanitation.”

The deputy sector minister, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, said the ministry was poised to make rural areas even more attractive.