Motorists who ply the Somanya-Mount Mary Training College (MOMACO) road and Somanya-Atua Government hospital road are lamenting the poor state of the road which connects the main Somanya community with the two facilities.
Though several assurances have been given regarding efforts being made to fix the problem, nothing is happening on the ground.
Perhaps the worst affected is the school community of the MOMACO where teachers and students have no choice but to endure the situation on a daily basis.
According to residents who live in the area and some drivers who spoke with GhanaWeb, the nature of the road is impeding productivity and asked government to fix the roads immediately.
A resident of the community, Doku Felix told GhanaWeb that aside the bad nature of the road, a bridge on the road was always overrun by the rains, resulting in severe flooding of the area.
“When it rains, the floods, sometimes it will reach your chest. No car will go like three or four hours before the flood will go. And the road too is rough, if the cars are passing, sometimes, their shaft, it can even loose and the tyres will pass its way and the car will also pass a different way,” he complained bitterly.
But the daily experience of inhaling the dust also comes as another problem for the residents.
Felix said, “The dust is giving us headache,” and called for the construction of a new road and bigger gutters to carry the large volumes of water accumulated during the rains.
A lotto operator, Eric Tetteh who has operated on the stretch for the past two and half years also complained.
“When the rains fall like this, the road is flooded [and] people cannot even pass, cars cannot pass through,” he told GhanaWeb.
“So this is the problem. We want the Council [Assembly] to come to come to our aid because always we have been going to them. MPs, MCEs have been promising especially when they are coming but they’ll come and spend the eight years and go, another person will come and go but we’re still having that problem here.”
He blamed the floods on the small size of the gutters and want the problem fixed as soon as possible.
Another who gave his name as Solomon also blamed the perennial flooding of the area on the nature of the bridge due to its inability to contain large volumes of rain water.
“If you could see, when it rains, the water that comes from the top is heavy so the bridge, when it reaches here, it brings floods and it brings so many things [garbage] from the top so when it reaches here, it [garbage] cannot pass the bridge under so that the water can flow,” noted Solomon.
The road, he added, also needs urgent fixing and must be attended to urgently.
“As you can see, the road itself is not good, this is the main road to Mount mary College so we want them to come make this bridge for us.”
Taxi drivers who ply the road on a daily basis had similar concerns.
One of them, Sewu Douglas told GhanaWeb that though authorities always promise to fix the problem, they fail to live up to their words.
“We suffer when working on this road. If it reaches voting time, they’ll tell us that they’ll do the road for us but after voting we don’t see them again and this has been happening for the past ten years because of this we charge passengers ten cedis to the place.”
When asked if they had discussed the problem with authorities, he said, “They all know [about the problem]. Even last Saturday the Municipal Chief Executive, [Ebenezer Tetteh Kupualor] and the [Eastern] Minister used this road to the graduation ceremony of the Mount Mary Training College.
“I don’t use this road twice in a day, if you do, you’ll have to go to the workshop,” he added.
Another driver, James Tenge also said conveying sick persons from the roadside to the Atua hospital is a difficult situation with some pregnant women being forced to deliver in their vehicles.
“The road is very bad, sometimes when we ply the road, our taxi sometimes get punctures. Sometimes when you’re conveying sick people from the junction to the hospital, it’s very bad, they complain a lot so when you’re going sometimes, they deliver on the road.”
