Ghanaians will see a historic smile on Prez. face soon– Joe Ghartey

Ghana’s Minister for Railways Development and lawmaker for Essikado, Joe Ghartey, has announced Ghanaians are about to see a historic smile on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s face just as Nigerians did when President Muhammadu Buhari unveiled a light railway system in Abuja this month with a smile.

This is because construction of a first-of-its-kind modern rail network, according to him, is about to begin from Accra all through the country and beyond Paga, a border town in the Upper East region, to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

He said a joint committee of experts and public officeholders from Ghana and Burkina Faso, which was tasked to come up with a master plan for the project, has almost completed its feasibility steps and that a pleading knock would soon come to the doors of traditional authorities to help provide land for the “Tema-Ouagadougou Rail Line”.

The minister mentioned this Wednesday in the Upper East region during an international engagement that saw the attendance of paramount traditional authorities, heads of departments and agencies, executives of Ghana’s governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) as well as government officials from both Ghana and Burkina Faso.

“If you google Abuja Light Rail, you’ll see the President of Nigeria smiling nicely in the train. We want to see the President of Ghana, the President of Burkina Faso sitting in the train and also smiling; then, we know that we have done our job. We are giving this contract. We’ll sign an MOU. It’s our aim that we’ll sign the contract before the end of this year so that they’ll start the project.

“I have come here today to tell you that the vision of the President of Ghana, the vision of the President of Burkina Faso is that there will be a railway line from Accra to Ouagadougou. We have reached a point where we can say with confidence that, if it is God’s will, there will be no turning back,” said Mr. Ghartey.

The rail line, as stated by the minister, will stretch from Tema through Ho, Hohoe, Jasikan, Nkwanta, Bimbilla, Yendi, Tamale, Walewale, Bolgatanga, Navrongo and Paga to Ouagadougou. Government, he added, had signed a memorandum of understanding with the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), the same company said to have constructed the recent rail line in Abuja and a similar one from Ethiopia to Djibouti.