By Akanimo Sampson
The 4-Tier Pokuase Interchange Project in Ga North Municipal District, one of the twenty-nine districts in Greater Accra Region, Ghana, will soon be handed over to the government.
It is scheduled for completion by this coming June.
The project, which is the first of its kind in the West Africa region and second only to South Africa in the whole of Africa begun on July 3, back in 2018, after a sod-cutting ceremony presided over by a Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, on behalf of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
In an interview, the Director of the Department of Urban Roads (DUR), Abass Awolu, an engineer, said that the contractor, Zhongmei Engineering Group Ltd. of China, has so far been able to complete approximately 96% of the entire work, and barring any unforeseen circumstances would complete the works by the second quarter of this year.
Executed under the Accra Urban Transport Project and supervised by the DUR under the Ministry of Roads and Highways, the Awoshie-Pokuase interchange project is mainly aimed at removing the traffic jam at the Pokuase ACP junction by preventing streams of traffic conflicting with one another from the Awoshie-Pokuase and Accra-Kumasi roads.
Apart from the main interchange, there are also a number of ancillary works incorporated into the project to provide improvement and upgrade of adjoining communities such as Pokuase, Ayawaso, and the John Teye areas.
They include the construction of drains, a little over 10-km of town roads, two footbridges that come with a ramp for the physically challenged, and a tunnel to serve water to communities that are not connected to the Ghana Water Company Ltd network.
Provision of road signs and other traffic management and safety features such as crash barriers, handrails, road line markings, Traffic lights, zebra crossings, laybys, and street lighting have also been factored into the project.
