General News of Monday, 13 October 1997

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Accra Metropolitan Assembly To Spend 5 Billion Cedis On Lorry Parks

Accra,(Greater Accra Region) 9 Oct., The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) is to spend five billion cedis to construct and rehabilitate 32 lorry parks in the city. Mr Nat Nunoo-Amarteifio, Metropolitan Chief Executive, said in Accra today during the commissioning of the rehabilitated Neoplan station. Some of the lorry stations to be rehabilitated are Arena, Changes and Agbogbloshie. The Neoplan station was rehabilitated at a cost of 350 million cedis and can contain about a 1,000 long distance vehicles at any given time. Mr Nunoo-Amarteifio said the project forms part of AMA's efforts to rehabilitate lorry parks in the city through its own resources and to provide new ones to ease congestion. He said cargo trucks will be allocated stations outside the city to ease the city centre of traffic. Mr Nunoo-Amarteifio said AMA will review toll collection at all lorry parks in the city, adding that "the situation where 100 and 200 cedis is paid by each driver a day is unacceptable. The assembly is not getting enough to build these parks, that is why when it rains, parks become unmotorable.'' Mr Nunoo-Amarteifio appealed to the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) to maintain discipline and keep the stations clean at all times.