Roads and Highways Minister Kwame Governs Agbodza has instructed Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives to intensify surveillance of infrastructure projects within their jurisdictions, declaring that slippage in completion schedules constitutes an unconscionable assault on the public purse. The directive was issued as part of his nationwide road inspection tours, where he assessed ongoing works and engaged contractors on delivery bottlenecks. According to Citi Newsroom, the minister stressed that local authorities must abandon passive postures and adopt forensic oversight to protect taxpayer investments.
“Delays hit the taxpayer in the pocket directly,” Agbodza asserted during one of the site visits, noting that protracted timelines invariably trigger contractual variations and cost escalations. According to Citi Newsroom, he mandated MMDCEs to conduct unannounced audits, demand verifiable progress metrics, and immediately flag impediments to the ministry for expeditious resolution. The scope of the order covers feeder roads, trunk corridors, and interchange projects dispersed across multiple regions.
Ministry data reveal that temporal overruns routinely compel revisions that balloon original contract values, destabilising fiscal programming and deferring socioeconomic benefits to communities. According to Citi Newsroom, Agbodza repudiated the culture of habitual extension requests, insisting that firms awarded tenders must demonstrate commensurate capacity and fidelity to agreed milestones. He charged MMDCEs to collaborate with regional engineers and the Ghana Highway Authority to establish synchronised reporting protocols that eliminate information asymmetry between centre and periphery.
Ghana’s road sector has historically grappled with financing volatility, compensation disputes, and climatic disruptions, yet analysts maintain that administrative laxity compounds these challenges into chronic underperformance. The current government has anchored its economic revitalisation blueprint on infrastructure as an enabler of agrarian modernisation, intra-regional trade, and industrial decentralisation. By devolving accountability to MMDCEs, the ministry aims to compress bureaucratic latency and ensure that policy imperatives manifest in asphalt, drainage, and durable surfacing without inordinate delay.
The minister signalled that assemblies exhibiting recurrent delinquency in project supervision will face administrative sanctions, while those demonstrating exemplary stewardship will be publicly commended. As the inspection tours continue, the new doctrine of localised accountability is poised to recalibrate contractor discipline and restore public confidence in the state’s capacity to deliver value-for-money infrastructure that undergirds national development.
Source: Citi Newsroom
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Author: Stella Sunu
