Upper West Regional Minister inspects projects in Nadowli/Kaleo district

The Upper West Regional Minister, Alhassan Sulemana has toured the Nadowli /Kaleo district to inspect on-going infrastructure projects in selected Senior High Schools.

The Minister, who led officials of the Upper West Regional Co-ordinating Council, the DCE for Nadowli/Kaleo, Katherine T. Lankono, some officials of A&QS Consortium Limited and AESL visited four senior high schools to inspect progress of construction work in the schools.

Mr. Alhassan Sulemana and his team inspected a 2-storey dormitory block and a dining hall with Kitchen at the St Basilides Vocational Training School in Kaleo.

The Minister’s second destination was at the Kaleo Senior High Technical School where he inspected progress of work on a 2-storey dormitory block, a dining hall block, a two-storey library block and a science laboratory block.

At the St Augustine Senior High Technical School, the team inspected a single storey girl’s dormitory and a 12-unit-2-story classroom block.

The team ended the day’s tour at the Queen of Peace Senior High School where they inspected construction works on a 2-storey dormitory block, science laboratory, library block and a fence wall with security post.

Mr. Andrews Kuundaari, the Upper West Regional Director of A&QS Consortium, said government in 2016 awarded a lot of projects and was constraint in spending because of the International Monetary Fund programme. This, he said has made payment of contractors difficult resulting in most of them not meeting their projects deadlines.

Heads of the various schools all made passionate appeals to the Minister for infrastructure, especially dormitory blocks to cater for students’ accommodation.

The infrastructural deficit in these schools has pushed school authorities to use the uncompleted projects for lessons and sleeping places.

Hon Katherine T., speaking to the media after the inspection exercise thanked the Minister for taking time to inspect on-going projects in her district.

She said, she was going to make efforts to get the contractors back to site to complete their works as government is bent on getting the Free Senior High School Policy implemented to the fullest.

The Minister expressed satisfaction with progress of works except for some projects that were awarded in late 2016. Contractors who also abandoned their projects without any tangible reason will be invited by the minister for a dialogue and a possible termination of their contracts.