No $570M was allocated in the 2022 Budget for reconstruction of Accra-Tema Motorway – Kwame Agbodza
The Ranking Member on the Roads and Transport Committee of Parliament has stated that no amount of money has been allocated for the reconstruction of the Accra-Tema Motorway.
Speaking on JoyFM’s Super Morning Show on Wednesday, Governs Kwame Agbodza said, “There was no money allocated for it. It was at the policy side of the budget. In the appendix, we didn’t allocate any $570 million to build the Tema Motorway.”
On Thursday, 30 September, 2021, then Government spokesperson on Infrastructure, Kojo Frempong, on the same show disclosed that the reconstruction of the Accra-Tema Motorway would cost $570 million and that reconstruction is set to begin in December, 2021.
He also revealed that the project is going to have five interchanges, and will go a long way in resolving road connection issues between Accra and Tema.
Unfortunately, reports from regular users of the motorway who called into the Super Morning Show reveal that work has not began on the highway.
Mr. Agbodza said, “They told me exactly what you saw in the budget. That they would find money for it. We did query it. I did raise the issue that there’s no funding. The contract between Mota-Engil is illegal but they went ahead with it.”
Mr Agbodza questioned how the government could sign a contract with a foreign entity without a source of funding.
“First, any contract that doesn’t have a start date, a completion date, source of funding, and scope of work is not fit for purpose,” he stated.
The MP for the Adaklu Constituency, further explained that, “Mota-Engil themselves are a foreign company. It is a foreign company. So that statement by the Ministry in reaction to a statement I made in the past is also totally out of place. Because if they were to say that contract with Mota-Engil was a contract, they would have been able to come to Parliament to make it a contract. Because it’s a foreign entity.”
He alleged that the contract is illegal because there was no financing agreement included.
“Their understanding is that whenever everything comes together, they would come to Parliament. But if you haven’t gotten a parliamentary approval, why are you calling it a contract. Even pretending that there is a start date to this contract. We all want the motorway to be built. They did all that as propaganda towards the 2020 elections.”
Source: Ghana News
