WHO IS THIS JSS TECHNICAL SKILLS TEACHER OF AN ENGINEER constructing the Odumase-Krobo roads?

Some portions of the road with sloping edges which could get eroded with the slightest downpour. 

It is only appropriate that I precede this piece with an acknowledgement that the heading is too long; it defies the conventional journalistic practice and acceptable number of words that should make a heading. I wish to put on record, also, that I am very much aware that the wording of the heading may sound mildly offensive to sensitive (or may be the overly sensitive) readers. In my current state, it’s most appropriate considering the message I want to put across.

It was election year and the President needed to tell us something when he graced the 2012 Ngmayem festival durbar. Being the typical politician he is, he skilfully told us what we wanted to hear. He decided to throw at us a piece of the national cake by putting the Kpong-Somanya-Akuse and Odumase-Oterkpolu stretch of roads back in shape. That came after a long period of incessant and eardrum-damaging noise on the terrible state of our roads. He dispatched a contractor to restore our roads to a form that could enable us- if we so desire- even over speed as is done on the Accra-Tema motorway.

Before then, these roads were not car-worthy. I perfectly understood and supported drivers in the area as they geared to roll out a campaign, one of which was to stop paying road worthy tolls to the Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA).

Not too long after the first gentleman’s promise, someone emerged on the scene posing as the contractor but without any of these modern day heavy duty earth-moving machines. Instead, he came parading with ridiculous peasant farming equipment (or utensils, if you like) such as watering can, rake, mattock (or was it pick axe), hand fork and something that looked much like an overused and worn-out shovel, tied all over with copper wire to keep going.

Those of us with inquisitive minds began wondering if our roads were feeder roads or perhaps, footpath that only needed a small communal labour to clear. Before we could find answers to these questions, this visibly quack contractor- much in the likeness of a medieval foreman for a government-sponsored school construction project- was nowhere to be found. He vacated site unceremoniously.

It took us nearly one year to see another contractor surface on the scene. To be sincere, he came with a handful of 21^st century road construction machines, at least marking an improvement on the previous one and giving us reasons to believe that our “transportation” woes were ending this time. Truth is, the project is ongoing (albeit slowly).

Maybe I should have waited to see what the finished work would look like before opening this my mouth. But hey, the last time I waited, we saw a simple culvert built across the road near the Agormanya total filling station develop hunchback because some JSS (not even SHS) technical skills teacher of an engineer found his way into our town to do his “practicals”. How on earth could a qualified contractor (who won the contract on merit) construct a simple culvert (not even bridge oooo or a stretch of road) only to end up raising the culvert beyond the level of the road, creating an unintended speed rump.

If you think that was the worse of crimes committed, hold on. Anybody familiar with the depth of the ditch at the filling station in question and the volume of water that runs through that culvert will agree with me that we needed a KNUST-trained and certified engineer with some appreciable years practical/field-work experience, or better still a team of engineers from the Engineering Regiment of the Ghana Armed Forces to tackle that project. What did we see instead, the contract was awarded to a “blig3”, as a typical uneducated Krobo “olady” will call a brick layer/mason.

Even as a lay man, I saw the sense in why the culvert should have descended further down into the ditch several meter away from the road so that- if for nothing at all- by the time the water or flood is gushing out of culvert, it would be nowhere near the base of the road to cause erosion that could eat into the base of the gutter and further into the main road to bring us back to square one.  

Yet this “blig3” did the unthinkable; he committed an unpardonable elementary error that leaves me fuming with rage any time I pass there. Now, we have a hunch back drain/culvert that is also shorter in length than the width of the road and with a gutter suspending to the right. Upon all this glaring shoddy work, my tax found its way into his back pocket, ably assisted by the leadership of the local assembly.

Why I am bothering you with this boring English passage is that I see in this new contractor (handing the ongoing project) the same technical defects as was displayed by the previous one. While he is too sparing with his materials and constructing with wrong aggregates of sand, stone and cement, he also seems to be constructing shallow drains that are sure to overflow even with the urine of any toddler.

Some portions of the road with sharply sloping edges which could easily get eroded with the slightest downpour have been skipped and left without gutters, cambers or embankment (stone patch) at the side. I’m not really sure if I am in a better position to explain to him the purposes these things serve, am I?

The OLD PRESEC (MAKROSEC) stretch of the road

For those of you who know the geography of Odumase very well and can close your eyes yet tell with precision the topography of the land, tell me why there should be no gutter from the old Zimmermann Presby chapel to pass in front of Bro Narh’s drug store, opposite the wooden OLD PRESEC storey building to the junction of the new Zimmerman Presby chapel, at least. Can someone explain to me why the broken and choked gutter that runs in front of the late Mifo’s shoe-making shop down to Milla should not be reconstructed before tarred? 

Tell me the sense in NOT providing bus stops along the road where there is enough allowance (of land) so to do. Who said we should not take this opportunity to correct whatever defect there is about the dangerously famous curve at Asitey which has proven itself a blood thirsty monster, killing innocent people and needlessly dispatching poor souls into eternity?

How about that taflats3 atakpaami of a house down the Salosi curve (on your right when coming from Adormeh)? Won’t it be a good idea to relocate that house and do something about the curve to save lives? We must not forget that not long ago, a heavy-duty tipper truck, fully loaded with limestone, ran into a house at this same spot, killing some “poor” man who thought he was securely sleeping in the comfort of his room. His children turned instant orphans thereafter and nothing was heard of them again.

As for me, I am doing my work by amplifying the sentiment of my people and please don’t ignore it thinking I will stop shouting, because I WON’T. The next time you hear of me on this same subject, I would be shouting louder, pitching the tone of my piece even higher and employing a more effective medium of mass communication.

Mr. Contractor, I presume you won the contract on merit after competitively bidding with others. Please justify the confidence reposed in you lest we put you in the bracket of JSS technical skills teachers.

Yours in the service of Klo Ma.

Can we have this ROUGH EDGES better done?