Naa Puowele Karbo III, the Paramount Chief of Lawra Traditional Area, has appealed for the construction of a bridge across the Black Volta at Dikpe (Dikpe Bridge) in the Lawra Municipality for easy movement of goods and services.

The bridge, to link Lawra to Burkina Faso, would promote ECOWAS cooperation between Ghana and that country and become a game changer to the development of the Lawra Municipality.

Naa Karbo, Vice President of the National House of Chiefs, said this during the climax of the Kobine Festival of the chiefs and people of Lawra.

He said, the Dikpe bridge, despite its importance to the people of the Upper West Region in general, it had not seen any movement towards its construction as envisaged.

It could be recalled that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo cut the sod for the construction of the 275-metre-long bridge on October 10, 2020, in the run-up to the general election.

The contract was awarded to Messrs Griner Engineering Ltd, at a cost of €26,458,521.34 and was expected to be completed in 24 months.

However, three years on, the contractor is yet to move to the site for work to begin.

The then Member of Parliament (MP) for Lawra, Anthony Karbo, during the sod-cutting, expressed optimism about seeing to the construction of the bridge within his first term, but that did not materialise.

The incumbent MP, Bede Ziedeng, said it was sad that the construction of the bridge appeared to be in limbo, adding; “already we have done nearly 36 months and yet there is still no sign of commencement of work.”

Naa Karbo, also the Vice President, Upper West Regional House of Chiefs, identified the construction of a TVET institution at Tuma, the Girls Senior High School project at Zambo, the Lawra SHS Assembly Hall and the Municipal Hospital upgrading as projects that had stalled.

He could not fathom why the emergency ward project at the Lawra Municipal Hospital, under the Northern Development Authority, had also stalled.

“I wish, therefore, to appeal to the government and the implementing agencies of these projects to address the bottlenecks hindering their smooth implementation for the benefit of my people,” he said.

Dr Hafiz Bin Salih, the Upper West Regional Minister, who represented President Akufo-Addo at the festival, charged Ziedeng to ask the necessary questions in Parliament on the delay of work on the bridge.