The Ghana Highway Authority is implementing a programme for the installation of several permanent weigh bridges at selected locations such as ports, production centres and board crossings.

Five of such weighbridges have already been installed. The Minister of Roads and transport Mr. Edward Salia who disclosed this said the programme is to curb overloading by trailers in the country.

The road infrastructure sub-sector, he noted, has seen significant developments with the Ministry also carrying out a number of institutional reforms to support the road transport industry.

He disclosed that between 1994 and 1998, the road sector completed about 1,146 km of road reconstruction, 16,790km of rehabilitation and periodic maintenance work and rehabilitation of several bridges at a total cost of 101.01 million US dollars.

He added that the road fund since its establishment, has allocated a total of 606.4 billion cedis to road agencies for routine and periodic maintenance of roads in the country. This, the Minister noted, has increased the impact of road maintenance performance tremendously, resulting in an improvement of road condition mix from an objective assessment of 20 percent good and 61 percent poor in 1997 to 29.6 percent good to 42.7% poor in 1999.

Touching on transport services and safety in the country, Mr. Salia said the National Road safety commission has enacted new laws to deal with engineering, education, enforcement and providing the enabling environment for effective legal and health issues affecting safety.

The Driver and Vehicle licensing Authority (DVLA) he also added, will among others license and regulate driving schools and select private garages to examine vehicles for the issue of road worthiness certificates. This, he said is to ensure that vehicles are examined more thoroughly to keep unworthy vehicles off the roads.

On rail transport, the Minister disclosed that the government's programme of reactivating and expanding the rail commuter service for workers in the Accra - Tema metropolis as a say of decongesting traffic in the national capital is on course. According to him, feasibility studies undertaken on the project outlined major routes to enhance the successful implementation of the project. These include a route from Tema to Accra, Accra Central to Weija and Tema-Accra, Achimota routes.

"This is to enable railways play a more meaningful role in the transport chain of the country," he said. He further disclosed that the BOST is providing the GRC with tank wagons for the haulage of petroleum products from the Tema Oil Refinery to Kumasi as part of the petroleum- railing project.

The Minister however called for the participation of the private sector in the implementation of the project.