Mrs Joyce Bawa Mogtari, the Deputy Minister of Transport, said the
Ministry, with funding from the European Union, is to set up a Road
Transport Authority to regulate all activities in the road transport
industry.
She said the draft regulations and
framework for the establishment of the authority had already been
prepared and would soon be placed before Parliament for consideration.
Speaking during the opening of a
three-day Transport Sector Review Conference in Akosombo on Thursday,
she said Parliament had also passed the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill
during the first quarter of this year.
She said the Bill would seek to provide
modifications that were necessary to fill the void in Act 678 to make it
compliant with international standards.
“Over the years, it has become necessary
to amend the Act to make the Civil Aviation Authority comply with the
necessary rules and guidelines of the International Civil Aviation
Organisation as well as to incorporate relevant conventions ratified by
Ghana into the Act,” she said.
She said Parliament had also passed the
Ghana Maritime Labour Regulations which sought to create a licensing
regime for the recruitment of seafarers and ensure their welfare.
For the railway sector, she said
transaction advisory services were ongoing to select an appropriate
private sector investor to partner Government to develop the Eastern
Railway Line and the Boankra Inland Port on a Public Private Partnership
basis.
Mrs Bawa Mogtari said the construction
of the Takoradi to Kojokrom Railway Line to support rail mass
transportation within the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis was ongoing and
was about 55 per cent complete.
She said Government was also considering
an Indian Exim Bank credit facility to construct the Tema-Akosombo
Railway Line which was part of the Eastern Corridor multimodal network.
She said the first phase of the Takoradi
Port Expansion project, which involved the extension of breakwater by
1.08km dredging to 14m chart datum and reclamation of bulk ore terminal
area were ongoing and was about 96 per cent complete.
“The first phase of Tema Port expansion
project which also involves the construction of a Bulk Cargo Handling
Jetty is about 70 per cent complete,” she said.
She said Government would soon deploy
three-unit 50-seater high speed passenger ferries that had been procured
to address the challenges of safe transportation faced by communities
along the Volta Lake.
“In addition, the construction of one
unit modular passenger/cargo ferry has also been completed and ready for
deployment on the lake,” she added.
Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, the Minister of
Roads and Highways, in a message read on his behalf, said from 2009 to
date, the roads and highways sector had attracted development partners
funds; loans and grants, of about 1.6 billion dollars.
He said the Ministry, in collaboration
with the COCOBOD, was implementing several and other projects aimed at
rehabilitating, upgrading and maintaining roads vital for haulage of
cocoa in six cocoa growing regions.
He said about 141 contracts had been awarded under the Cocoa Roads Programme amounting to GH¢2.8 billion.
He said the Ministry was also
collaborating with coastal neighbours of Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ivory
Coast to implement port project with support from the World Bank.
The review conference, which was under
the theme: “Ghana’s Transformation Agenda: Sustainable Integrated
Transport Systems for Socio-Economic Development,” attracted
stakeholders from both the public and private transport sectors and
development partners.
It was organised by the Ministry of Roads and Highways and the Ministry of Transport.
GNA
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