Meet the young ‘road contractors’ repairing Ghana’s broken roads

Correspondence from Eastern Region:

Most young men and children are usually seen on the roads in an interesting activity of 'repairing' damaged roads.

Their labor is entirely not free as in the end, they solicit 'payment' from drivers for their services.

Drivers and passengers, on the other hand, are usually divided about what the motive is.

While some of them are of the view that these guys are only out to exploit drivers, others believe their activities no matter how minimal, put sections of the roads in shape.

GhanaWeb, therefore, edged close to some of these boys to observe and discover from them the motivations and reasons behind their activities and if their work actually impacts positively on the sorry state of most of Ghana’s roads.

Some of these teenagers on the Odumase-Oterkporlu road in the Eastern Region said they usually work in a group of seven.

According to the gentleman, they work during the weekends, after school hours, and during the holiday periods.

He added that his friends and himself had pitched camp about 150 meters away from the Oterkporlu Bridge.

Some four boys aged between 10 and 13 on another stretch were captured busily digging and scooping soil with their bare hands from the nearby bush and filling the potholes on the roads.

Determined to cash in on their supposed services, the boys sometimes run after the cars demanding payment for their services.

The team also drew closer to one of the teenagers who gave his name as Otoo Michael, a 13-year-old form two student of the Roman Catholic Junior High School at Oterkporlu.

Explaining his reasons for engaging in this activity, he said this is to aid the drivers by repairing the road for them while earning some income in the process.

“We are repairing the road so that the drivers will pass very well,” Michael told GhanaWeb. “We are doing this job for money to help our parents.”

Michael and his colleagues who have been involved in this activity for the past year say while some of the drivers give out GH¢1, GH¢2, GH¢5, GH¢10, or even GH¢20, others give them nothing.

“Some [drivers] give us [money] and some do not give us,” Michael said.