The Bolgatanga Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mr Joseph Amiyuure, on Thursday successfully calmed tensions brewing in the Bolgatanga Municipality.

Pressure groups and concerned development associations planned the massive demonstration to call duty bearers attention to the deplorable state of the Bolgatanga townships roads.

A meeting which was hastily convened at the instance of the MCE and the Regional Director of the Department of Urban Roads, Mr Peter Amoako, after a tip off, to appeal to the planners of the demonstration to suspend it as the Assembly puts up an emergency team to quickly tackle the problem.

The meeting which was attended by some members of The Bolga Development Youth Association, some executive members of BONABOTO, and the Media Coalition for the development of Bolgatanga, impressed on the MCE to announce timelines for works to commence which he obliged and promised to start work in some emergency areas.

The Urban Roads Director who gave technical explanations to the group, attributed the inability of the Assembly to do major rehabilitation works on the roads in the Municipality to the rains this year, and promised to get work started immediately there were signs that the rains would not come with such intensity.

He explained that it was technically wrong to work to patch potholes while the ground could no longer absorb water and said the level of moisture could not permit compaction, adding that “if we do any pothole patching, it will not last for even two weeks, and that would also create another concern on the quality of the work”.

Mr Amoako who doubles as the Municipal Urban Roads Engineer, said the Bolgatanga-Bawku road had outlived its live span and indicated that continuous patching of potholes on it was not the best practice hence the award of that road under construction. He promised to immediately “get contractors to go to site if by Saturday the rains do not come and the moisture content on the land is reduced significantly”, adding that “we shall consider some emergency areas such as the front of Malisko, the Timber Market area and other spots for now, so that we move to do full scale works on the township roads when we are certain that the rains would not come anymore”

He further used the opportunity to announce that the Municipality had been allocated some major road upgrading by government and said 5 kilometres Tanzui-Sirigu road, 5 kilometres, Tindonmolgo-Sirigu road, 5.3 kilometre Zaare road, 1.72 kilometre Daporetindongo cementary link roads and a 3 kilometre Gambibgo road were all meant to be upgraded.

He further indicated that 5 kilometre road rehabilitation in the Bolgatanga township would be executed under a Government of Ghana and the Government of China pact under the Ghana High Authority.

He therefore told the participants at the meeting to exercise restraint and not rush to incur the displeasure of government on issues that could be settled amicably through dialogue.

The MCE expressed gratitude to the leaderships of the pressure groups at the meeting for their cooperation and readiness to contribute to the development of the Municipality and said “I will find a forum within which I can get to you so that we can work together to bring development to Bolgatanga“

He said in addition to going to site to maintain the roads, he would instruct his men to reshape some of the roads linking the communities that have become so bad as result of the heavy rains.