According to them, the neglect of the road had left farmers and traders in the area in a sorrowful state as they could not transport their farm produce to the marketing centres.
The disappointed residents said since President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo cut the sod for the construction of the stretch, there has not been any work on the road; leaving the manholes and gullies to continue to pose an inconvenience to commuters.
A driver said “We heard from Akufo-Addo last year that this year is a year for roads. We heard that rhetoric across many TV and radio platforms. The company that came to amend the road just did a passive job. You can confirm with the drivers.
“Cars fall off the road just like that anytime. And so for Akufo-Addo, we thank him for his 419 to us. God be with him. Sometimes I even wonder if the Western Region is part of Ghana. Akufo-Addo hasn’t been good to us. God be with him.”
Another driver narrating the story said “as drivers who ply this Tarkwa stretch, we go through a lot of difficulties. When you fix the car, it doesn’t even last for a week. Look at the road we’re plying on. They say ‘the best is from the West’. But now it’s ‘the poor from the West’.
“If you ply our road, you’ll observe that we are way behind. As for those of us here at Tarkwa Nsuaem, it appears we are not part of the country. If you look at some of the resources from our enclaves such as bauxite, timber, gold, and cocoa, you wonder why they don’t attend to us here at the West.”
“And as for we the drivers, our case is worse. When you buy petrol today and use the stretch, within a short time, everything gets finished. Sometimes during our work, we get stuck in the middle of the road.
“When it rains, you don’t even know where to pass. This very place we’re standing looks like a fish pond. Such that it will even be possible to rear fish in it. We the drivers are affected. So we plead with the government to come to our aid since we’re behind,” he added.
“They’ve come to measure the roads. What they told us is, that they’re constructing an international road to Burkina Faso. They even did some work at the side and side of the road just a few months ago, but we’ve never seen anything again,” another aggrieved resident noted.
Nana Addo cut sod for Tarkwa roads
In September 2021, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo cut the sod for reconstruction works to commence on the 66-kilometer road from Tarkwa to Agona-Nkwanta.
The project, estimated to cost 95 million Euros, would be undertaken by M/S Gabriel Couto-Rango Consortium and is expected to be completed in 36 months.
Nana Add declares 2022 as another year of roads
The President said the construction of roads is one of the key policies the government will embark on in his second term of office and declared that 2022 is another year of roads.
“Roads, roads, and more roads. It’s the #YearOfRoads,” he said in a Twitter post.
According to him, he will largely focus on and prioritize road projects to improve infrastructure.
“The government of Ghana will start work on nine new major road projects in parts of the country this year (2022) and complete many others that are at advanced stages of completion,” he said.
