Tamale, Jan. 17, GNA - President John Agyekum Kufuor on Wednesday inspected a number of development projects in the Tamale Metropolis as part of his two-day working visit to the Northern Region.

These included the $38.5 million Tamale Sports Stadium, a two-block hostel with the capacity to accommodate 896 students for the Tamale Polytechnic and proposed inland transit portside at Datoyili.

The Shanghai Construction Group, the contractors working on the stadium project that has a seating capacity of 21,000, has already completed the super-structure; done the grid structure for the roof and are now engaged in the decoration and fixing of equipment. They have also set the playing pitch for grassing.

Mr Mike Chen, Project Coordinator, informed President Kufuor that they would complete the project ahead of schedule.

Work on the stadium, which is one of four to be used for the African Cup of Nations (CAN) tournament to be hosted by Ghana in 2008 began in January 2006 and was expected to be completed by October 2007. On the Tamale Polytechnic hostel, the two contractors working on it, Antartic Limited and China State Construction assured President Kufuor that the project was on course.

The Ghana Educational Trust Fund (GETFund) is providing the funding, which comes up to 26 billion cedis.

The Contractors are supposed to finish the job by October 2007. President Kufuor is expected to perform a ceremony at Walewale on Thursday for work to officially start on the construction of four major bridges to open up the Fumbisi area, popularly called 93overseas" of the Northern Region and link the Region with the Upper East Region. 17 Jan. 07