N1 Highway in Accra
For some residents in Lapaz, a suburb in Accra, the gesture from the United States’ Millennium Challenge Authority to dish out $547 million dollars to Ghana, paving the way for construction of a 14.1 km three-lane dual carriageway to ease both human and vehicular traffic has become a death zone.
On Monday, an 11 year old girl was killed instantly after she was knocked down by a speeding car when she was crossing the Lapaz section of the N1 Highway to school.
The tragedy has obviously angered residents who have hinted prosecution charges for gross negligence and manslaughter, blaming the engineers and authorities who supervised the construction work of lacking the professional foresight to place footbridges at the most relevant portions on the highway.
Since the commissioning of the road in February 2012, over 70 human lives have been lost through accidents – victims mainly pedestrians – who risked walking minutes to cross to both sides of the road instead of using the safer footbridge that has been built far from the reach of the bustlingly commercial area, particularly at the Lapaz junction of the highway.
On Monday, the angry shop owners and residents at Lapaz did not only protest by blocking the road from traffic, but indicated the need for an independent investigations into the work done by the contractors, architects, supervisors and all those involved in the execution of the project.
Speaking exclusively to this reporter at the scene of the accident, Mr. Ben James Dadzie was baffled that despite repeated complaints about the location of the pedestrian footbridge far way from the heart of the lorry station (bus terminals), “those complaints were not respected for immediate attention.”
“As you can see, the footbridge there (pointing at the direction) is just a huge white elephant and waste of the country’s money. Strangely, we had officials who supervised this whole work which has now turned into a death trap,” he intoned.
He maintained that an investigation to identify the defects and failure of professional supervision to prevent such avoidable mistakes in the construction of the road would give a strong signal to those who engages in future public work that they cannot perform their mandate with impunity, in order to give the nation value for money.
Recently (October 22, 2012) in Italy, a court jailed seven public officials for misleading a whole community of the imminence of an earthquake which destroyed L’Aquila city, killing 309 people in April 6, 2009. The seven convicts were charged for manslaughter for their inability and failure to give factual information on the timing of the earthquake to the inhabitants of the city to prepare an evacuation in order to prevent a major risk posed by the quake. (See The Economist, October 27th 2012, p. 69)
Interestingly, the Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium Development Authority (MIDA), Mr. Martin Eson-Benjamin has admitted failure to properly site footbridges on the N1 Highway.
He confessed to Joy News on Tuesday that his outfit did not do enough in terms of survey, leading to, in some cases, misplaced footbridges on the highway.
“I think that enough survey has been made now for everybody to know exactly which area needs a footbridge because when we were doing it initially we were not very, very sure where to put the footbridges,” Mr. Eson-Benjamin acknowledged.
He disclosed that the city authorities have indicated to construct footbridges to safeguard pedestrians, explaining that MIDA would not play part in the construction since the project has been handed over to the Ghana Highways Authority.
The Mayor of Accra, Mr. Alfred Oko Vanderpuye has confirmed the new development that his outfit has earmarked about 10 footbridges to be constructed at various locations on the Highway. The 14.1 road already has six footbridges.
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