The Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwame Governs Agbodza, has appealed to the Electricity Company of Ghana and the Ghana Water Company Limited to expedite the relocation of utility installations along major road corridors to prevent delays in the execution of road projects.
According to the Minister, stronger collaboration between utility service providers and road contractors is critical to ensuring that projects affected by electricity lines, water pipelines and other installations are completed on schedule.
Mr. Agbodza made the appeal on Wednesday, July 8, during an inspection tour of ongoing road projects in the Eastern, Volta and Oti regions.
He observed that delays in relocating utility infrastructure remain one of the major obstacles slowing the progress of several road construction projects.
The Minister explained that government has made financial provision for utility relocations for road projects.
“We will just appeal once again to Ghana Water and Electricity Company of Ghana to assist us to do the relocation of these services because they are the ones that are likely to delay the project,” he said.
“We have enough time to move those things and we always have some amount of money in the project for this relocation,” he added.
Mr. Agbodza further noted that in some cases, the cost of relocating utility installations can consume a significant portion of the project budget, placing an additional burden on contractors.
“It becomes rather difficult when sometimes the cost of the relocation is almost one-third of the project. It’s as if you don’t even know whether we are doing a water project with the road project or doing electricity connection project,” he remarked.
He therefore called on the ECG and Ghana Water Company Limited to work more closely with contractors to ensure the timely relocation of utility infrastructure, enabling road construction works to proceed without unnecessary interruptions and be completed within the stipulated timelines.
