Hawkers hampering work on Circle Interchange – Urban Roads

The Department of Urban Roads has scheduled to team up with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to begin warding off hawkers from the construction site of the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange.

According to the Department, the activities of hawkers are hampering work, which is 40 per cent complete.

“There are excavator trenches that people try to sit right in there trying to sell their wares,” the Director of Urban Roads, Alhaji Abass Awolu, pointed out. “That definitely is not safe for the person selling the wares because if there is a deep excavation and somebody falls in, we will then have a major accident on our hands.”

As a result, he said, the Department will team up with the AMA to drive the hawkers from the site.

“We will work together with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly and the sub-metro in that area so that we can keep the hawkers away from the construction sites.” He announced that the footbridge that controls human movement in that area, regarded as one of the busiest in the country, will be pulled down in November.

He said the contractors have managed disruptions caused by construction relatively well.

Work on the three-tier interchange, estimated at €74.88 million, began in October, 2013.

Jointly funded by the governments of Ghana and Brazil, the project is expected to be completed in 2015.