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Rough road to Tema Port

The city of Tema is the industrial hub of our dear country.  In the vision of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, President of the First Republic, Tema was to act like the fulcrum around which Ghana's industrial revolution would revolve.

To actualise that vision, Tema was designed and demarcated into industrial, commercial and residential zones with well-built roads.  It has a port, one of the biggest artificial harbours on the continent.

Tema was home to many factories and industrial establishments, which was a source of employment for thousands of young men and women.  The  young ones of today may not know that.  

Besides the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO), which is crawling on its feet and is being pushed to the brink by unconcerned and irresponsible political leadership,  Tema was home to notable industrial firms, including Tema Food Complex Corporation, manufacturers of canned fish, flour, poultry feed and many others; Ghana Textile Manufacturing Company (GTMC), Ghana Textile Printing (GTP), producers of the popular Dumas textile prints, Tema Steelworks, Akasanoma Electronics and many others.

These are all history, thanks to a revolution which decapitated, decimated and dismantled these companies, most of them state-owned, and consigned them to the dustbins of a reckless revolutionary zeal.

President Nkrumah did not just build Tema into an industrial jungle.  There was the Accra-Tema Motorway,  the main artery to link Accra, the national capital, to Tema, the emerging industrial and port city of the young Republic of Ghana.  

Thanks to uncaring and irresponsible leadership over the years, the motorway has become one of the most dangerous roads to traverse in the country.  No effort has been made to maintain the road, let alone to upgrade it from its present two-lane in response to the heavy vehicular traffic it carries.  A road which was built with concrete and steel is repaired by pouring bitumen and chips in the craters it had developed.  These don't last and drivers, in their attempt to avoid these sharp-edged holes, find their vehicles rolling several times, with devastating consequences.

The Tema end of the motorway has become a serious bottleneck, which, on a bad day, could keep motorists in queue for hours.  The reason is simple.  At the time the great Kwame Nkrumah built the motorway, Tema was a small town and the satellite communities such as Ashaiman, Afienya, Dahwenya, Prampram and beyond were more or less villages.

Today, vehicles linking Accra to Aflao on the eastern border and Akosombo, Ho and beyond on the famous eastern corridor converge on the Motorway roundabout.  A quick decision to build an interchange to redistribute the vehicles could solve the problem.

The roads within Tema do not reflect its status as the industrial nerve centre of a country that prides itself as first African country, south of the Sahara, to gain political independence.

Tema in its current state has nothing to prove that it is the pride of a country that has rich mineral wealth in the form of gold, manganese, diamond, bauxite and lately oil and gas.  It has nothing to show that cocoa, Ghana's prime agricultural produce, for which it is well-known, is exported through its port.

Tema is the source of a chunk of national revenue but looks very miserable, neglected and abandoned. The greatest dishonour to Tema is the deplorable condition of the beach road that leads to the port where the bulk of all imports and exports passes.  That road does not speak well of a sovereign country that is courting the investment community of foreign lands.

We could have shown concern for national pride by making all the sacrifices necessary if it even means cutting down the salaries of people whose only job is to come and throw jabs at political opponents on radio and television to construct another motorway all the way from Osu to Tema.  There is no doubt Nkrumah would not have sat down to see the mess on that stretch.

Industrial and port cities everywhere have well-developed roads which are the veins that carry industrial, commercial and economic blood of their home countries.  We cannot claim that we are so poor that Tema, our version of Hamburg, Rotterdam and other port cities, should lie in ruins. This cannot be about poverty; it is pure irresponsible leadership.

 

Writer's email: [email protected]

Blog: kofiakordor.blospot.com

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