The National Communications Officer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi has described as laughable claims by the Finance Minister that year 2020 is the year of roads.
Presenting the 2020 budget statement on Wednesday, the Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta said: “Today the cry everywhere in Ghana is about the poor state of our roads. It is an unprecedented cry and it makes you wonder where all the roads in the NDC’s Green Book are,” he bemoaned.
“Mr. Speaker, this is why we are going to focus more on fixing our roads across the country in 2020 and beyond. To get the road sector moving and contractors back to work, government will pay 80% of all contractors,” according to him.
“Mr. Speaker, Ghanaians want action on our roads, not words or plans or Green Book claims about what has been done. We intend to swing into action and let our work do the talking for us,” he added.
He said Government has identified critical roads across each of the 16 regions and construction would begin on all these critical roads soon.
He added that “Cocobod has also secured funds to continue with ongoing and new cocoa roads.”
According to him, work on these roads will also commence soon.
“As part of our new initiative to complement the traditional execution of road projects, we have launched the Accelerated Community Road Improvement Initiative,” he said.
But Sammy Gyamfi says the government is only recycling road projects.
He is predicting that the government will by 2020 take out 3.2 billion cedis from the road fund and used it for consumption through the ”useless capping policy of the Akufo-Addo government”.
In his view, the 3,2 billion cedis is far more than the ” $500m dollars (2.5 billion cedis) Sinohydro loan government is trumpeting, would have done so much by way of roads, paid contractors who today have been ruined, accelerated movement of people and goods and generated revenue for the development of the country.”
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Folks, Government’s claim that 2020 is the year of roads is very laughable.
Fact is, by close of 2020, a total of 3.2 billion cedis would have been taken out of the road fund alone and used for consumption through the useless capping policy of the Akufo-Addo government.
Capping Details:
- 2017- 800 million was capped from the road fund
- 2018-600 million capped
- 2019- 1.2 billion capped
- 2020- 600 million expected to be capped
Total- 3.2 billion cedis.
This 3.2 billion, which is far more than the $500m dollars (2.5 billion cedis) Sinohydro loan government is trumpeting, would have done so much by way of roads, paid contractors who today have been ruined, accelerated movement of people and goods and generated revenue for the development of the country.
Which sensible person or government consumes free GHS3.2 billion tax revenue meant for roads and turns round to brag about borrowing 500 million dollars (2.5 billion cedis) for roads? Yet, this is the tragedy we face in Ghana today under the deceptive, insensitive, corrupt and nepotistic Akufo-Addo government.
In any case, none of the over hundred (100) road projects promised in the 2019 budget has been constructed. So what’s the guarantee that the promised roads in the 2020 budget will see the light of day?
Recycled road projects galore. Year of roads indeed! Talk is really cheap!
Source: Rashid Obodai Provencal||rainbowradioonline.com