Stakeholder Ministries, Departments and Agencies have begun discussions to construct an 8-Lane High way to link the Port of Tema from the Tema Community 3 traffic light where the new expanded Tema Port is located through the General Hospital Road to the Ashaiman overhead end of the motorway.

Ahead of the impending monumental project which also seek to effectively integrate the rail system into the transportation modes of the Harbour city of Tema, the Ministers of Transport, Roads and Highways as well as Railways and their respective technical team have pledged to collaborate to ensure the success of the project and other projects including construction of rail lines as part of efforts to boost the port business in Ghana.

A delegation comprising the Minister of Transport Kwaku Ofori Asiamah, Minister of Roads and Highways; Kwasi Amoako Atta, and Minister of Railways; Joe Ghartey among other officials met with the Director General of GPHA, Paul Asare Ansah and CEO of MPS, Mohammed Samara to discuss progress in the direction of the various projects.

Touching on an 8 lane road construction from the Tema General Hospital to the port, the Roads and Highways Minister said the project when completed will be beneficial to the Port, Tema and the progress of Ghana as a whole.
He expressed his Ministry’s unflinching support for the integration of a good rail system to support the port expansion project.

“As the port expansion is going on, the required road construction and rail lines must all start and get on simultaneously. So that by the time the project comes to completion, we would have also had a good road network and railway network,” the Road and Highways Minister, Kwasi Amoako Atta suggested.

The Minister of Railways recognized the importance of a railway construction in trade facilitation and also relieving traffic congestion in the port city of Tema, hence, solicited the support of the Port Authority and MPS to support the rail sector.

“We do not want this very important development to become a curse in disguise,” he stated.

Kwaku Ofori Asiamah, Transport Minister, lauded the effective collaboration between GPHA and MPS in bringing about the port expansion which will have a rail terminal and hopefully the impending 8-lane highway construction.

“So in giving the construction to MPS, we realised that we cannot reap the ultimate benefit of that project without developing the road so as part of an agreement with them, and as part of the concession, we came to agreement with them that for the project to go well, you will also have to construct the hospital road to cater for the traffic,” he said.

Mohammed Samara, CEO of MPS, updated the delegation on the Progress of the ongoing Tema Port expansion which has some rail component.

“There is a lot of feasibility studies that would require input from the successful bidder or operator of the rail itself. But we have allocated the space and we have done the preliminary designs for that in terms of layout, concept, etc. detailed engineering obviously needs to be done at a later stage,” he explained.

He stated that with the necessary authorization given, MPS is ready to accelerate processes to bring the concept into action.

He noted that with the full representation of infrastructural plans come 2020, including the railway system, the Tema Port will be comparable to none in the sub-region.