Fifty-seven years after the Adomi Bridge was opened to traffic, the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) is undertaking its first major rehabilitation works on the bridge, which serves as a major link connecting the Eastern and the Greater Accra regions to the Volta Region.
The project is scheduled to be completed in 24 months and the contractors, Messrs Bilfinger MCE GmbH of Austria, are expected to remove the entire bridge deck, replace its hangers and provide lighting along the path of the bridge, while the arch remains intact.
It is estimated to cost 12.9 million Euros. Although it is late in the day, the Daily Graphic welcomes the initiative to undertake the rehabilitation, which will not only guarantee the safety of motorists using the bridge but also prolong its lifespan.
One major canker that has bedeviled this country is the lack of a maintenance culture. This problem has resulted in many national monuments deteriorating.
The Daily Graphic, therefore, finds this intervention very timely, and, as the Minister of Roads and Highways, Alhaji Amin Amidu Sulemani, indicated at the commencement of work yesterday, the government could no longer afford to delay the project, as it would be compelled to pay the contractor for the idle time.
We believe that as a people, we must take the maintenance of public assets and even our personal effects more seriously. The tendency of performing beautiful ceremonies to inaugurate projects, only to forget about their maintenance, must be addressed.
And, as is always associated with projects of such nature, we expect some problems to come up in the early days of the project. Already, drivers are complaining about the long delays before being ferried across the Volta River, as well as the high fares charged by the ferry.
Moreover, the ferries will operate only between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. daily, which means that drivers who were otherwise using the bridge at night may have to divert their journeys through the Sogakope-Adidome-Ho road.
As it is now, we are not sure how many vehicles the ferry can take and the systems put in place to carry vehicles which may get to either end of the bridge long before 6 p.m. but will not be able to make it due to the delays complained about by the drivers.
The Daily Graphic, therefore, urges the GHA to streamline the operations of the ferry, so that the complaints and challenges that have come up on its first day of operation will be addressed.
Certainly, the nation cannot continue to postpone the rehabilitation of this national asset, for which reason we need the support and co-operation of all stakeholders for the project to succeed.
We hope the contractors will keep to their timelines of 24 months or earlier, so that the rehabilitation does not become another nebulous toothache as motorists using the Nsawam-Suhum-Apedwa road are exposed to due to the non-completion of the project.
The Daily Graphic further entreats the consultants supervising the project to ensure that the nation derives value-for-money services. For, if the original bridge, built by Dorman Long Bridge Engineering Limited, had been shabbily done, we do not think the bridge would have lasted this long.
