Dawhenya-Afienya residents laud Government decision to reconstruct deplorable road

Residents and Commuters who ply the terrible 7.2km Dawhenya-Afenya road daily have expressed excitement after the Mid-Year Budget Review captured their road.
At Abbey and Ajumador, where The Chronicle interacted with quite a number of the residents and commuters, though they admitted that the previous government captured the same stretch in their budget about three times, they never saw any contractor on site.

However, they expressed confidence in the John Mahama-led government to fix their road, as according to them, they witnessed some preparatory work on the road in 2016 when the NDC lost power.

Closely glued to their radio and television sets, whilst others plugged their earpieces to their mobile phones to listen and watch the Mid-Year Budget Review, read by Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, some of the residents told The Chronicle that they involuntary screamed when they unexpectedly heard the Minister say, “Mr Speaker, we will be rehabilitating the Dodowa-Afienya-Dawhenya road.”
The residents said the public announcement relieved them and they cannot wait to see the contractor mobilise to the site to start work.

About the Dawhyena-Afienya road
On a faithful Friday, in 2019, over 800 angry residents of Dawhenya gave the police and fire service personnel a torrid time when they set bonfires in protest against their terrible road.

A series of robberies on the road, plus the closure of the area’s health facility, which had been overwhelmed with thick red dust, prompted them to stage demonstration to draw government’s attention to their plight.
The youth, waving placards and tying red bands on their heads and wrists, set tires ablaze at the Dawhenya-Afienya junction on the Tema-Aflao highway resulting in heavy vehicular traffic.

The demonstration, which lasted for about six hours, later resulted in the exchange of stone pelting between some personnel of the Ghana Fire Service and the youth, consequently resulting in the injury of some personnel and demonstrators.
The swelling crowd prompted the police to fire rubber bullets to disperse the crowd to allow the Ghana Fire Service personnel to fight the raging bonfire, which erupted into a fireball that lit most parts of Dawhenya.
The youth promised to return with a ‘Part Two’ of their demonstration, should the 7.2km Dawhenya-Afienya road fail to receive attention.

Personal experience

Indeed, the 7.2km link road between Dawhenya and Afienya is so deplorable that only heavy-duty vehicles can traverse it.
Other vehicles that dare to ply on the horrible road travel at a snail’s pace to avoid the driver deserting the car in the middle of the journey, as the vehicle can easily break down.
The road has a weak, narrow metallic bridge and due to this, commuters are easily attacked by robbers who lie in ambush at night.

The road was a major political campaign message for the NDC in 2008, when it made enormous political capital out of it against the then government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Not too long after he became president, the late John Evans Atta Mills visited the road and promised to fix it by the end of his first term in office, but after his demise in 2012, his successor, John Dramani Mahama, in 2013 contracted M/S Cymain Ghana Limited to fix the road.

The stretch was a dualised design and so about 100 buildings were knocked down to allow for expansion. Though tensions were heightened, nerves were calmed for development because this would be a major route that would connect the Tema-Aflao highway and the Tema-Akosombo highway.
Persons whose buildings were demolished for the reconstruction of the road were not paid any compensation, but after a few months of commencing work, the contractor abandoned the site for non-payment.

During his ‘Accounting to the People’ tour of the Greater Accra Region, sometime in 2016, President Mahama made a stopover at Dawhenya, where he addressed the people that in about a fortnight, the contractor would be paid some money to enable him to move to the site to commence work. However, that promise was a fiasco.

In one of The Chronicle’s report in August 2016 headlined: ‘We can’t campaign -Afienya NDC’, Habib Mohammed, who was the NDC’s Youth Organiser in the Ningo-Prampram Constituency, but now the NADMO Coordinator for the municipality, said “It’s been about two months now since the President gave that assurance, but I can tell you on authority that my President has disappointed us because the contractor has not moved in.

“The NPP is using this road against us and they are right. It’s a failed promise, and so the NDC is shy to go to commuters, other electorates and persons whose buildings had been destroyed for the road reconstruction works to campaign for the NDC and President Mahama.

“With only three months to the elections, there is no way my government can fix the road and this will cost the NDC dearly.”
Chairman of the Afienya Taxi Station, Agbe Ebenezer, in that same publication, told The Chronicle that the road was so deplorable that there was no week that a commuter was not attacked by an armed robber.
He said vehicles continued to break down in the middle of the journey and that was causing financial loss to motorists.

“We are spending almost all our earnings on spare parts and since the government has failed to give us a better road, we, as taxi drivers, will teach it a great lesson.
“The NDC said this year’s elections shall be based on issues, and since our issue is that we do not have a single kilometre of good road in Afienya, taxi drivers in Afienya and Dawhenya are waiting for December 7 to bid farewell to the government,” Agbe said.

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