A former Ashanti Regional Surveyor of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) has called on the National Engineering Coordinating Committee (NECC) to help strengthen all the Regional Engineering Coordinating Committees to ensure the effective monitoring, supervision and clearing of road reservations in the country.
The move is expected to help save road reservations from abuse and unnecessary payment of compensations during road and rail-line construction.
Nana Nanabanyin Ninsin-Imbeah II, who was the Chairman of the Ashanti Region Ghana Highway Authority Road Reservation Task Force (GHA-RRTF), said the recent movement of the NECC to order the demolition of the wrongful siting of a District Assembly complex was inappropriate, because it had usurped the mandate and duty of the Regional Engineering Coordinating Committee (RECC).
He noted that if the RECC worked effectively and efficiently, the seeming rampant disruption of service would be avoided.
According to the former Principal Surveyor, the RECC was not operational in some places giving the NECC cause to unnecessarily intervene. Nanabanyin Ninsin-Imbeah has, therefore, called for re-orientation and inauguration of all Regional Engineering Coordinating Committees throughout the country. He contended that once the RECC was properly in place, appropriate coordination would ensue and a complete stoppage of the unnecessary encroachment of road reservations, particularly with regards to utilities (Drains, Water, Electricity and Telecoms).
He said effective coordination of encroachment of the road reservations would not occur at all if the RECCs, and by extension the Metropolitan, Municipal and District (MMDECC), were effective from RECC supervision and monitoring, and made functional.
The former Ashanti Regional Chairman of the GHA-RRTF called upon the NECC, comprising Ghana Highways Authority, Department of Urban Roads (DUR), Department of Feeder Roads (DFR), Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), Telecoms, Survey Department and Department of Town and Country Planning now the Land Use and Spartial Authority as members, to further travel round the country and revive all inactive RECCs to ensure that it saves the government from the payment of compensations to people who deliberately encroach upon road reservations with the sole motive of getting compensation paid to them by the government.
He also suggested that the shift of the Town & Country Planning Department (TCPD) now the Land Use and Spartial Planning Authority, which served as Secretary of the NECC to the Department of Urban Roads (DUR) must be reconsidered.
The former Regional Surveyor also suggested to NECC to, as a matter of urgency, direct all the road agencies to halt the craze by which people freely move earthmoving equipment to win filling material from the Road reservation without restraint to enrich themselves at the expense of the nation.
