Joe Ghartey blames NPP for failed sky train plans

Former Railways Development Minister, Joe Ghartey has indicated that the inability to acquire a sky train in Accra should be blamed on the New Patriotic Party government.

According to him, the project could not be realised due to a lack of enough funding for its execution.

He indicated that the budget limit for the 2018 fiscal year was below what the contract was projected to cost.

“We were approached by South Africans who said they could build the sky trains on a BOT [Build, Operate, Transfer] basis, and the amount of money that they were talking about per kilometre, we did not have it in the budget. What I had been given was a limit of $2 billion and that was supposed to be used for the Tema-Mpakadan railway line and the Western railway line,” citinews.com quoted Joe Ghartey as having said.

He also explained that there was also some disagreement between the contractors, investors and the government as the investors wanted to operate the trains and later hand over to the state.

“So these people came in 2018 and said they would build the sky trains on the build, operate and transfer basis, and so we signed an MoU with them, and they came back after doing some initial studies and said they are in a position to raise money for the project, and so we should sign a concessional agreement for the trains to be transferred to us after 30 years and that was something we had to look into.”

Joe Ghartey further added that the emergence of the COVID-19 also stalled the running of all the necessary feasibility studies to ascertain the viability of the project.

“In 2019 and 2020, the world including South Africa was under lockdown, so these people could not come to do the feasibility studies and that is why I decided to focus on the railway and kept the sky trains on hold,” he said.

The government of Ghana signed the agreement with the South African group, Africa Investment (Ai) SkyTrain Consortium, for the construction of the Accra Sky Train Project in November 2018.

Africa Investment (Ai) SkyTrain Consortium was expected to conduct extensive feasibility studies in nine months and commission the construction by 2020 but none of that is yet to happen five years on.

NYA/WA