The Ministry of Roads and Highways has established a maintenance call centre and a mobile App, dubbed “Maintain My Road” to provide real-time information on road defects and facilitate public involvement in addressing these issues.
The initiative which forms part of the ministry’s Enhanced Maintenance Programme would allow the citizenry to submit pictures and reports on road defects for efficient and timely resolution.
It focuses on routine maintenance activities, such as pothole patching, grading, and repair of traffic signals.
It also allocates 60% of the road maintenance budget from the Ghana Road Fund to address maintenance issues on the road network.
Speaking at the launch of the initiative today, in Accra, the Minister for Roads and Highways, Hon. Francis Asenso-Boakye said even though the government had completed works on 6 new interchanges, 35 bridges and 12,830km of roads across the country, “periodic and routine maintenance activities have not received the commensurate levels of investment and attention by successive governments.”
“For this purpose, the Ministry introduced the Enhanced Maintenance Programme at the start of the year with emphasis on routine maintenance activities, such as pothole patching on the paved network and grading on the unpaved roads.”
The programme, according to him is based on three pillars namely, prioritization of key routine maintenance activities, provision of sustainable funding for road maintenance activities and public ownership and involvement in road maintenance.
Hon Asenso-Boakye further explained that the call centre and App will be “implemented on a pilot basis for the next five months with a focus on the main trunk roads and four main cities namely, Accra-Tema, Kumasi, Takoradi and Tamale.
On this part, the Chairman of the Ghana Road Fund Board, Hon. Frank Annoh-Dompreh , in a speech read on his behalf, assured that “funds for routine and periodic maintenance will be prioritized to preserve the network and make the commuting public comfortable and safe.”
“This is what we owe the public, to listen to them and let them know what we are doing about their plight,” he emphasized.
