The Ashanti regional minister, Mr Simon Osei-Mensah, has embarked on a tour to inspect some infrastructure projects in the region.
The tour, which started in Ahafo-Ano South East district, saw Mr Osei-Mensah inspecting an agenda 111 project currently under construction.
He also inspected a Business Resource Centre in addition to a 60-bed hospital project at Sabronumu, which is being undertaken by Vamed Engineering Gmbh of Australia.
At Pokukrom, also in the same district, the minister and his entourage inspected the district court, which is about 90% complete.
Minister Osei-Mensah proceeded to Tepa in the Ahafo-Ano North where he paid a courtesy call on the paramount chief of Tepa Traditional Council, Nana Adusei Ampem I, after which he inspected the Tepa Jubilee Market.
The minister also had a staff meeting with the Ahafo-Ano North assembly and later inspected the Tepa Audit Service office, which is being funded by the KfW Development Bank.
Addressing the media at Kunsu, Simon Osei-Mensah explained that he had visited two sites of agenda 111 projects and unfortunately, both of them are at the sub-structure level, except Kunsu in the Ahafo-Ano Southwest district.
According to the minister, the contractors have, however, given assurance that they will speed up work, adding that some of the challenges were beyond their control.
“We are now in the dry season so if they want to work, they can work faster, I pray that they can do a lot between now and the end of April. If they go beyond the end of April, they will have a challenge with rainfall.
“Even possibly, the next two months will be the peak period for them to work, because sometimes we experience heavy rainfall even in March,so they should speed up with the process so that they can even roof most of them,” he said.
According to him, if the contractors are able to roof most of them, then they can work under the roof, which has to do with filling in with blocks.
Mr. Simon Osei-Mensah disclosed to the media that before the end of last year, he visited agenda 111 projects going on in Obuasi East,ObusaiWest,Akrofromu and AdansiAsokwa.
At AdansiAkrofuom, he discovered during these visits that the contractor had stopped work due to the nature of the land, a development which called for redesign of the whole project.
In view of the above, Mr Osei-Mensah indicated to the media that the plan for the Akrofrom agenda 111 hospital had been altered and it is going to be vertical instead of horizontal,adding that similar development had been recorded in Kumasi.
On the Tepa market project,Mr Osei-Mensah indicated that the project was commenced by the government and at a point in time, theTepa Traditional Council realised that it was delaying unnecessarily, so they decided to help complete the project,but the process did not go on well.
“They should have applied to the ministry of Local Government for approval, but they thought it was within their jurisdiction and they wanted shops for their people,so they went ahead with the project.”
