Accra, March 14, GNA - Dr Richard Anane, the Road Transport Minister, on Tuesday said the total road network in the country has increased from 39,633 kilometres in 2001, to 58,536 kilometres in 2004. He said the increase has been the result of the "huge investment made by the government in the sector since 2001." Dr Anane was answering a question in parliament on the current distribution of the national road stock and the relative conditions of the various types of roads in the country.

The Minister said: "the current total national road asset is 58,536 km. These are made up of trunk, feeder and urban roads." "The respective lengths of the trunk, feeder and urban roads as at December 2004 are 13,433km, 41,039km and 4,064km," he added. Responding to another question from Mr Edward Salia, NDC-Jirapa, on how the road network has improved by type, condition and region since 2001, the Minister said poor trunk roads have decreased from 73 to 46 percent since 2001 to 2005, while good trunk roads have increased from 23 to 43 percent within the same period. He said within the last five years, tarred roads have also seen some improvement with poor roads decreasing from 22 to five percent and good roads increasing from 49 to 63 percent.

Answering another question, Dr Anane said in November last year, the Department of Urban Roads was established at Wa in the Upper West Region and a roads unit was consequently established for the municipality. He said an inventory of the road network in the Wa Municipality was carried out and it was established that the total road asset of the municipality was 374km of which 142 was paved. He said the district assembly was in the process of awarding contracts for routine maintenance in the area for 2006 estimated to cost 943 million cedis. Mr Salia had sought to find out from the Minister what plans were in place for surfacing roads in the Upper West Region. The Minister said the Wa Municipality was expected to benefit from the Road Transport Ministry's local roads rehabilitation programme in the next two years.

Mr Abbey Oppey, NPP-Awutu Senya, also asked the Minister when the Kasoa roads in the Central Region would be constructed but the Minister said the Ministry had no "isolated programme at the moment for the rehabilitation of the Kasoa township roads." He however said part of the Kasoa-Nyanyaano road would be rehabilitated this year and that after some minor projects in the Kasoa area were completed, the rest of the "Kasoa roads will be considered in subsequent road improvement programmes."