With the passing of time, the Minister of Roads and Highways, Kwasi Amoako-Attah, has become known for being a strict, no-nonsense, tough-talking politician, who does not particularly shy from calling out people for wrongdoing.
In most cases, the minister has ordered for instant actions to be undertaken, especially when those perpetrators have done things that have affected roads in various parts of the country.
As the man in charge of ensuring that the country’s roads and highways are well constructed, taken care of or maintained, it has mostly not come as a surprise.
In this GhanaWeb article, we take a look at a few of those moments that his open anger at such wrongdoings have been captured on camera, and made their way into the news.
2017 - Minister for Roads and Highways angry at contractors
In 2017, when he had taken office as the sector minister not too long ago, Kwasi Amoako Attah was reported to have expressed anger at some engineers and contractors who shoddily constructs roads and later demand monies from the government.
He added that his outfit would no longer tolerate such behaviors.
The sector minister announced this when he inspected a portion of a road that had caved in between Nyamebekyere and Tinkong, just before a police barrier on the Mamfe-Koforidua Road in the Eastern Region.
The road caved in after torrential rains, which lasted for about an hour.
The floods destroyed most of the low-lying roads, bridges and produce in the area.
2019 - Roads minister orders demolition of 22-storey building at Airport
In 2019, a viral video of the Minister of Roads and Highways, Kwasi Amoako-Attah, showed how the minister has ordered for the demolition of a 22-storey structure at the Airport Residential Area.
This followed complains from some residents in the community to the minister.
In the presence of security personnel, the minister ordered for the arrest of some three foreign nationals who were supervising the project.
“The chief executive of this area must be questioned. Not even the president will do this. And I don’t care which political power, economic power or traditional power that person has, this will not be allowed and we will not allow this.
“This structure came to my attention just days ago,” the minister fumed.
The project, which is near-completion as of now, is just adjacent the Association International School.
2023 - Angry roads minister arrests, forces illegal miners to wash off mud on tarred road
In the most recent case, a visibly angry Minister of Roads and Highway, Kwasi Amoako-Attah, is reported to have ordered the arrest of two illegal miners and forced them to wash off mud on portions of the tarred Akrofufu to Twapease Road in the Atiwa West District of the Eastern Region.
The illegal miners were carting excavator with low bed truck vehicle from their mining site near the roadside, spreading mud on the tarred road and causing gridlock, the report added.
The minister, who is also Member of Parliament for the area, in the company of some constituency executives of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), bumped into the gridlock while returning from a funeral at Twapease over the weekend.
The minister is said to have noticed the mess caused on the road by the illegal miners and the destruction to the shoulders of the road, and furiously ordered his police guard to arrest the illegal miners.
Two of these illegal miners were arrested, while the others escaped, the report by kasapafmonline.com added.
The illegal miners were then forced to wash the mud on about one kilometer of the road.
“My party executives and I were from a funeral, and we came to meet this low bird trailer with galamsey excavator. Look at this distance, more than a kilometer of road have been destroyed -so muddy.
"The entire stretch of the tarred road has been muddied so no car could cross. All the vehicles have parked at both. They have destroyed the shoulders of the road so I stopped and ordered my bodyguard to arrest them,” the minister is reported to have said.
He continued that the illegal miners arrested have been handed over to the police.
”Their galamsey activities are destroying the road constructed with huge amount of the taxpayer’s monies. Look at the destruction.
“I have handed them over to the police for the law to take its cause. The police in the own wisdom will carry their own investigation,” he added.
Kwasi Amoako Atta declared what he calls “negative tolerance” to illegal mining in the area, warning that henceforth, illegal miners will be clamped down in the district.
“I am the Member of Parliament for this constituency, and I am going to work with my District Chief Executive who is head of DISEC to support the position of government. The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, has put his presidency on the line to fight galamsey to protect the environment for posterity. We have to protect our water bodies we to protect our land,” he added.
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