Inusah Fuseini, Former Minister for Roads
Former Minister for Roads, Inusah Fuseini, has debunked the claim by the current Roads Minister, Kwasi Amoako-Atta that President Akufo-Addo’s government started the Pokuase Interchange from scratch.
According to the former Member of Parliament(MP) for Tamale Central, all the three touted interchanges namely; Tema Interchange, Obetsebi Lamptey Interchange and the Pokuase Interchange by the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) were conceived by the Mahama led NDC government.
Speaking in an interview on Okay FM’s ‘Ade Akye Abia’ Morning Show, Inusah Fuseini insisted that the Mahama led NDC government conceived the aforementioned interchanges and put the idea into drawings and designing and subsequently went ahead to look for financiers for the projects.
He stressed that before the Mahama administration left office in 2017, it had entered and concluded a negotiation with the African Development Bank to finance the projects; thus, a demo of the interchanges were approved at cabinet and sent to Parliament for approval, after satisfying the condition precedence.
“When the NPP came into the office, the NDC government had done these processes. It is not true that the NPP government started the Pokuase Interchange from the scratch; the Roads Minister knows that what he is saying is not true,” he challenged.
“All the evidence to prove that the NDC started the Pokuase Interchange can be found in Parliament. When I went to Parliament at that time to move the motion for the approval of the Tema Interchange, I said that Pokuase is just around the corner and we will start early 2017. I said that the Tema Interchange will start in the last quarter of 2016 or early 2017. I went to parliament to ask for approval of the first phase of the Obetsebi Lamptey Circle Interchange,” he said.
He posited that the ruling NPP government is engaging in mere propaganda with the claim that it started the Pokuase Interchange from the scratch; thus, the claim of the NPP to have changed it from the original three-tier to four-tier cannot be true as the current government has not added a penny to the project except the money secured by the NDC government.
“The Pokuase Interchange design has not changed from three-tier to four-tier, because the NPP government did not add any money to the one we have already secured with the African Development Bank,” he insisted.
“The NPP government is making propaganda saying that the Pokuase Interchange is going to have four lanes. If they do that the interchange will collapse because the foundation of the project is not meant for four lanes and they have not changed it either,” he challenged.
He was of the view that the NPP government has not started its own projects because project conception to designing and to execution takes more time; making it impossible for the NPP government to have started the Pokuase Interchange from the scratch.