Roads Minister Criticizes Unscrupulous Road Engineers

The Minister of Roads and Highways, Alhaji Amin Amidu Sulemani, has taken a swipe at unscrupulous road engineers who extort money from contractors before sending them to project sites or signing certificates for payment for jobs executed. Such an unethical practice, he said, had accounted for poor quality of roads in the country. He, therefore, tasked the management of the Department of Urban Roads (DUR) to instill discipline in its engineers who often connived with contractors to cheat the state. Annual review Alhaji Sulemani expressed the concern at this year�s annual review conference of the DUR last Thursday. The conference, on the theme: �Strengthening the role of DUR in Ghana�s Road Development Agenda� which was attended by regional directors and other senior officials of DUR, was to examine the department�s performance last year with the view to addressing inherent challenges to ensure the quality road construction and maintenance. Ministerial Monitoring According to Alhaji Sulemani, reports from the Ministerial Monitoring Team in 2013 brought to the fore numerous, negative and unethical practices on the part of some of the engineers of DUR, which included extortion of money from contractors. To him, such unethical practices had resulted in poor quality of work to the detriment of the state and asked the management of the DUR to instill discipline in its staff.