Motorists have begun using the Daboya – Chailele – Busunu road after the Member of Parliament for the Daboya/Mankarigu constituency, Alhaji Asei Seini, who doubles as the Deputy Minister of Health intervened to get it fixed.
Some sections of the 25kilometer road was completely cut-off leaving commuters from Daboya and Busunu stranded and several farmlands submerged after heavy downpour had flooded parts of the district.
However, the MP in collaboration with the Roads and Highway Minister, Kwasi Amoako Attah swiftly directed the contractor to return to site to fix the road in a matter of hours.
The contractor carried several boulders to cover portions of the road that was washed away by the floods and leveled it with gravel to make the road motorable again.
The Deputy Health Minister said he had to quickly move back to the constituency to ensure the contractor return to site to fix the problem for economic activities to continue unabated.
However, he indicated the steps taken are temporary measures and further gave an assurance that the project will be redesigned in due for proper construction to prevent future occurrence.
Alhaji Asei argued the disaster was avoidable if the grading works done was raised higher with bigger gutters connected to contain the volumes of flood waters.
In view of this, the Daboya/Mankarigu lawmaker advised the engineers and contractors to take lessons from what happened.
He further admonished road engineers to always do their feasibility studies during the raining seasons for due diligence before beginning with road construction in the north.
“They don’t perceive some of these obstacles because we have flat lands here. They just feel that as for here there are no obstacles and we can do a lot of things but I always tell the engineers that – if you want to see northern roads proper and able to do better bridges, come during the raining season” he said.
The Acting District Chief Executive, Mr. Eliasu Red Bawah said the devastation caused this year is terrible compared to past incidence, and therefore, commended the Member of Parliament and the Ministry of Roads and Highways for acting swiftly to find temporary solution to the problem.
“…What we are seeing now is emergency works to ensure that we can link Daboya to the rest of the world before permanent solution will follow later. The Regional Director of Highways was here yesterday and they advised this as an emergency measure.
And I agree entirely with the measures taken because we couldn’t have done anything more than this to immediately connect Daboya to the rest of the world” he added.
Meanwhile, the Daboya road project was awarded to Logistics Support Construction Company in 2015 for construction within a period of 24 months at a cost of about GHS20 million.
However, THE CUSTODIAN has learnt the contractor abandoned the project and left site since 2017.
