By Admin1

Copyright ghanaiantimes

President John Dramani Mahama has broken ground to mark the commencement of the $10 billion ‘Big Push’ infrastructure initiative across the country.

The initiative is intended to accelerate infrastructural development to drive job creation and prioritise the completion of uncompleted and abandoned critical infra-structural projects across all sectors.

For the symbolic take-off of the ambi-tious initiative, the President cut sod for the construction of the Dodowa-Afien-ya-Dawhenya road.

• President Mahama exchanging pleasantries with some of the chiefs on arrival

He also later cut sod for the construc-tion of the Atimpoku-Asikuma-Any-rawase-Ho-Denu-Aflao stretch at Titrinu near Ho.

In all, there are 32 road projects earmarked under the initiative with a GH¢13.9 billion budget for this year.

They include the construction of a new bridge on the Oti River at Dambai; rehabilitation of Wa-Han Road; upgrading of Tumu-Hamile Road; Rehabilitation of Techiman-Nkonsia-Wenchi Road; Wenchi- Sawla Road; Sunyani and Kumasi Outer Ring Roads, Dualisation of Winneba – Mankessim – Cape Coast- Takoradi Road; amongst others.

Addressing the chiefs and people of Afienya at a durbar for the commence-ment of work, President Mahama said other roads captured under the initiative in the capital include Ashaiman Asutu-are, Oyibi-Apolonia, Shai Hills-Doryu-mu-Dodowa, Adenta-Dodowa, and Black Star Square-Tema.

President Mahama explained that the initiative prioritizes roads that link regions, districts and food production areas to open up the country for investments.

“The big push touches all 16 regions of Ghana. Every region is going to benefit its fair share,” President Mahama stated.

Quality, President Mahama said, would not be compromised and that contractors working on big push projects would be held to strict accountability.

“We went through a very rigorous pro-cedure to choose the contractors because we believe quality and speed is important,” the President said, adding that the capacity of the contractors to execute the project was a major factor in the selection criteria.

As part of measures to build the capacities of local contractors, President Mahama said “majority of the contractures are Ghanaians because we believe in their ingenuity”.

He assured of financial liquidity to ensure that the projects were completed within schedule.

Other sectors like agriculture, educa-tion, health, transport and sports would be factored in the GH¢30 billion big push budget for next year, President Mahama said.

The Minister for Roads and Highways, Governs Kwame Agbodza, whilst assur-ing that the Dodowa-Afienya-Dawhenya project would be completed in 24 months, he said the timeline for the other projects would be adhered to.

He urged the collaboration of residents at the various project sites to ensure an incident-free project.

FROM JULIUS YAO PETETSI, AFIENYA