The Minister of Roads and Highways has become an enemy of progress for the people of Bamboi-Babator in the Savannah Region as he refuses to pave way for a Non-Governmental Organization to freely upgrade the road for the people there.
This is per the revelation of the MP for the area, Hon Alhaji Yussif Sulemana, who reveals the 28.5km Bamboi to Babator road remains in bad shape simply because the Minister has deliberately become a bottleneck.
AgDevco company Limited, an agric-focused NGO, he reveals has secured a £490,000.00 grant from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in UK (FCDO-UK) to fix the road.
FCDO-UK only requires a formal guarantee from the Minister that the road will be maintained properly after it has been freely paved for Ghana and this guarantee, the Minister has used every trick in the book to shy away from.
“They sourced funding from FCDO- UK to reshape the Bamboi -Babator Road in other to be able to attract more investors to the farm and the financiers wanted the go-ahead from the Ministry of Roads and also an assurance that the road will be maintained thereafter for the next few years.
“Just for you to agree to maintain the road for this number of years… that is a problem”; the Bole MP lamented.
The MP made the revelation during a stopover Mo Traditional Area on a thank-you tour in the Constituency.
What worries him the most is that if the guarantee does not come from the Ministry by May 1, 2021, the FCDO-UK will recall the grant.
He laments that he and the management of AgDevCo Limited have been to the ministry of roads and highways on three occasions for the agreement to be signed however, the Minister has refused.
“FCDO-UK has supported the AgDevco with £490,000.00 and will retrieve the money on 1st May 2021 if the Ministry of Roads and Highways does not Agree or assure them they will maintain the road every year for 10 years,” the Bole-Bamboi MP is quoted as saying.
Usually, this kind of sabotage is often rooted in the fact that a given sector Minister or authority demands to be given a percentage of the money as bribe before they would allow the project to go on.
WhatsUp News cannot independently verify if this is the case in respect of this road project as well.
AgDevCo is a non-profit agricultural project development and investment company headquartered in London with operations in many African countries. It has offices in Zambia, Mozambique, Ghana and Tanzania.
The Ghana office was formally established in 2012 although AgDevCo has been working in Ghana in partnership with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture since 2010.
Its partnership with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is purposed to develop Babator in the Savannah Region as a commercial farm block and the project is expectedto have 26,687 hectares of irrigation farms making it the biggest in Ghana and West Africa.