<<Print>>

Response to the Minister’s claims on his just ended press conference, where he established that all roads in Ghana have been fixed and that it will be ‘hypocritical’ to say otherwise which got the widespread conversation.

Mr Kojo Danquah unravels the claims made by the Minister to tour the Eastern Region particularly the Minister’s hometown and where the president comes from that is Kwabeng and Kyebi respectively.
Relevant to the probe of Kojo Danquah to verify the claims made, if indeed it holds any substantial facts, investigation revealed that only the home of the president, kebi and Kwabeng towns have been asphalted and this can not be made the standard to say all roads in Ghana have been fixed as the Minister established.

Mr Danquah posit that it is unfortunate that the Minister had the effrontery and arrogantly spewed unsolicited lies even at a time traffic congestion in Ghana has gradually becoming a never ending menace. Particularly Accra, and Kumasi as one of the most congested cities in Ghana, all business has been centralized. Almost every major road in Accra or Kumasi experiences traffic gridlock of various form and size, an evidence that road space and deplorable state in this country continues to exceed normal.

A very critical problem facing Ghana which evolved barely few years ago to apparent is the traffic congestion and deplorable road networks. It makes life uncomfortable for people. Every year governments spend huge budgets to solve this problem. Accra and Kumasi is suffering from this problem especially at rush traffic hours, thus morning and evening.

Journey times around Accra have remained stressful and unreliable. You can wake up by 5am in the morning to leave the house for 6am and get to the office just before 9am. Other times you can wake up 4am in the morning, leave the house 5am and get to work later than 8am, it all depends on the mood of the traffic on that particular day, typical of Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

More unfortunate, most commuters do spend close to one third of their whole day in traffic. Traffic congestion leads to many problems for Ghanaians. Individuals have been fired from their jobs, lives have been lost and some person’s lives have been placed on standstill due to traffic yet every effort to reduce traffic congestion particularly Accra and Kumasi has been to no avail. The stress Ghanaians undergo in traffic daily is even reflected in their attitude and reaction towards other fellows in cases of argument or dispute.

The current population of Ghana is 30,707,303 as of Wednesday, December 11, 2019, based on Worldometers elaboration of the latest United Nations data. Ghana 2019 population is estimated at 30,417,856 people at mid year according to UN data. Ghana population is equivalent to 0.39% of the total world population and the United Nations Report statistics of the worId’s projected populations of couple of years ago projected that Ghana would have a population of 33 million people by 2030.

Based on our findings, what worsens the traffic situation in Accra and Kumasi is that people head towards the same direction around the same time of the day because major companies are situated around the same axis and people lay their heads around the same area. Hence there are peak periods in the morning and in the Evening when traffic congestion would drain one out. Questionably, can workers resume at work and close at separate times of the day instead of the usual 8a.m – 5p.m? This question could lead into a stereotype which is to some extent but highly worth discussing nationally and instead of the Minister to focus road expansion and construction, he mischievously want to use the fixed roads in his hometown as a yardstick.

“The road deficit situation here in Ghana is a product of awful priority by the incumbent government and deceit on Ghanaians who trusted this government to do better, but they have not been able to find a cognitive solution to it and instead of acknowledging zero-performance of work done, they seek to do the usual fabrication of unverified lies,” Mr Danquah said.