President John Agyekum Kufuor has directed that the Tema-Sogakope-Aflao highway, which had been given out on contract should be made dual-carriage, Mr. Richard Anane, Minister for Roads and Transport has hinted.

He was speaking at a durbar at a bridge construction site in the Ho District during an inspection of progress of work on three bridges in the Ho and North-Tongu districts.

Mr. Anane also confirmed that work would begin on the Jasikan-Brewaniese road in October, this year.

He announced that the 55-kilometre road from Sokode-Gbogame-Juapong through Abutia, as well the 13-kilometre Sokode-Gbogame-Bame road, which shortens the distance between Ho and Hohoe, would be tarred.

The Japanese government through the Japanese International Development Agency, (JICA) is funding two of the bridges, spanning River Kolo, at a site near Atigo in the North-Tongu District and another on river Alabo, near Amesianyakope, at a total cost of 1.8 million dollars, under the JICA Medium and Small Scale Bridges Project Phase two.

The government of Ghana is funding the third bridge - a box culvert at a site near Volo, also over River Kolo, costing about 425 million cedis. Mr. Anane said the two bridges near Atigo and Volo would link Juapong and Adidome, a journey that is presently either made by a 178-kilometre detour through Afienya-Tema-Sogakope or 132 kilometres through Ho.

He said with the bridges, the journey between Adidome, the capital of the North-Tongu District and Juapong, the second largest town, would be cut by more than half to 58 kilometres.

Mr. Anane said the Juapong-Adidome feeder road, 22 kilometres of which is a new stretch, would link up communities along the lake to marketing centres, while the bridge at Amesianyakope would also link Osiabura through Abutia to Sokode-Gbogame as an important service route to markets in Ho and Dededo.

He said government's programme was to identify missing links in the rural network in the country and to provide the necessary remedial facilities, which were bridges and box culverts.

Mr. Anane said discussions are going on with other development partners to join Japan, France, the UK and Spain in the feeder roads improvement project. The three projects would be completed by the end of December, this year.

Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, Miss Kazuko Asai, said between 2001 and 2003 her country would provide 58 billion cedis for the construction of 18 bridges in six regions including three in the Volta Region.

She said Japan would extend the grant for the procurement of superstructure material and construction of small and medium scale bridges to improve the living conditions of the rural people.

Miss Asai said the project would remove the transport bottlenecks that hamper rural people's access to basic social amenities.

She observed that overloaded vehicles plying Ghana's roads at maximum speed shorten the life span of roads-obviously built with certain standards of traffic and called on the authorities to increase their efforts to check this phenomenon.

Miss Asai said Japan would continue to extend development assistance to Ghana in the form of Grant Aid and Technical Co-operation.

Director of the Department of Feeder Roads (DFR), Martin Hmensa, said bridges were expensive investments requiring rational decisions in selecting sites for the installation. He implored communities to allow the Department to guide them in selecting sites where the aggregate advantage of the communities was better served. Mr. Hmensa said government was constructing all access roads along the route linked by the three bridges.

He suggested that district Assemblies and Regional Co-ordinating Councils assist in the planning and implementation of bridge development programme in view of budgeting constraints.

Mr. Hmensa said the DFR had responsibility for 32,600 kilometres of roads; about 65 per cent of the national road network, 44 per cent had been classified as in good or fair condition and the remaining 56 per cent in poor shape.

Volta Regional Maintenance Engineer of the DFR, David Brobbey, said under a new strategy for the maintenance of feeder roads, contractors would be committed to road networks in the same vicinity to allow for easy accessibility to tackle jobs all year round.

He said the JICA funded bridges were being executed by KAJIMAR, a Japanese firm, while that of the government was being built by KASARP, a local contracting firm working on the access roads.