The National Democratic Congress (NDC)’s presidential candidate, John Dramani Mahama, has promised that a future NDC government will revamp the District Road Improvement Programme (DRIP) started by the current New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration.
He criticized the present implementation of DRIP, claiming it is poorly executed and lacks proper planning.
During a media event in Sunyani, Bono region, on Wednesday, 11th September 2024, Mahama expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of roads in the region.
He pointed out that many roads are either inadequately constructed or remain incomplete, reflecting the shortcomings of the government’s approach to improving road infrastructure.
“You just don’t go and bring that number of road equipment; you haven’t employed operators, so many of the districts do not have grader operators or roller operators to operate the machines, so the machines are still standing there. Aside from that, they didn’t make a budget for fuel,” he said.
“It is a good idea but not well thought through. They hurriedly brought in the equipment for political gimmicks without doing the necessary organisation, so when we come we will take the concept, but we will advertise and recruit the operators, we will train them on how to maintain it, and we will make sure that the district assemblies have the budget to run those equipment.
…We will identify the roads; every district will have to identify the emergency roads to be worked on, and the government will budget for it so that we can give them the money to go out and work on those roads,” he emphasised.