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The Deputy Minister for Roads and Highways, Stephen Pambiin Jalulah, has said that government cannot contract as many new roads as it envisaged because of the current economic challenges.
“The implication is that we cannot begin new projects but for the ongoing projects we are paying contractions to come and do it.
Let me add that the source of funding for the roads is not entirely the government of Ghana.
“The government through taxpayers are maintaining and doing new roads but we also have development partners,” Mr Jalulah said.
Jalulah, who is also MP for Pru West, was Speaking on The Probe on JoyNews, and said that the Roads Ministry can only scale down construction because the budget for all ministries has been cut.
He was responding to questions on an assessment of President Akufo-Addo’s track record on Roads and Highways.
The assessment was raised following the President’s fears while delivering the State of the Nation Address that although he would have wished that every single community had a well-constructed road, the resources are not enough.
Livestream: Akufo-Addo delivers 2023 State of the Nation Address to Parliament
But Mr Jalulah told programme host Blessed Sogah that despite the challenges and lack of resources, the government is committed to ensuring that the new road facilities which were approved and funding granted are completed.
“We cannot scale up the construction and we can only scale down…but there will be new roads just that we will scale down, if we planned 10 roads we cannot do that we may do five depending on…,” the Deputy Roads Minister said.
“The challenge we have is real and it’s not only Ghana, but this is just a short while.
I can say that in a short while things will improve and before then we have planned projects and we say that we don’t have enough resources, we look at the amount of traffic a road gets and we do that,” he said.
Mr Jalulah added that the government is hoping to complete seven new interchanges by the end of 2024.
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