Northern Regional Minister terminates Ibrahim Mahama road contract

• Posted on August 4, 2017
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Northern Regional Minister Salifu Saeed has terminated the Bimbilla-Salaga road contract which was given to Engineers and Planners, a company owned by Ibrahim Mahama, brother of former President John Mahama.

The contract, which was awarded to the company over a year, was yet to be started, although mobilization fee had been paid by the government.

The minister was worried that the company had not been able to move to the site to start the project saying, “Given the capacity of the company and the fact that they have all the logistics needed to carry out this project, I still can’t understand why the project has not been executed. We can’t wait; we need this project delivered.”

The Northern Regional minister appealed to residents and users of the road to exercise restraint as his outfit would ensure its completion to facilitate easy movement of traffic.

Last week, a heavy downpour rendered parts of the Northern Regional capital, Tamale, flooded. The rains, which started in the early hours of Tuesday, July 25, saw the region heavily flooded. Properties worth over thousands of cedis, livestock and some human lives were also lost.

Major roads linking rural communities in the region to the capital were also rendered un-motorable by the rains. Among such roads was the Bimbila-Salaga road in the Eastern corridor of the region.

Mr Salifu Saeed urged contractors working on all the Eastern corridor roads to halt activities on any other road and rather come and fix the Bimbila-Salaga road.

The regent of Bimbilla, Naa Andani Dasana, has called for the road project to be looked at again, indicating that it’s affecting economic activities in the district.

He asserted that with the prospect that Bimbilla has and considering the fact that it’s part of the food basket for the nation, and also taking into consideration that Bimbilla will become the central hub when the Eastern corridor roads are completed, there was the need to revisit the plan for the road construction and make adjustments.

“Naanum is going to obviously be the centre of development when the Eastern corridor roads are completed, and with a growing population as that of Naanum, the roads are going to be small for us.”

According to the regent, the initial plan of having a single lane road will not be adequate for such an area with such prospects of growth and development.

“It will therefore be appropriate to have a multi or dual carriage which will serve the present and future generations,” he charged.

FROM Eric Kombat, Bimbilla