DRIP is a good initiative but poorly managed – Mahama

Presidential candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, has stated that a new NDC government will take up the District Road Improvement Programme (DRIP) initiated by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government and do it properly than what is being done presently.

The former president indicated that the government has failed to execute the initiative properly.

According to him, the DRIP initiative is good but not well thought through.

The government launched the initiative as part of efforts aimed at improving road infrastructure in various districts across Ghana, but Mr. Mahama says it lacks proper planning and implementation.

He said this while speaking at a media engagement in Sunyani, Bono region, on Wednesday, 11th September, 2024.

He also spoke about the quality of roads in the region, pointing out that some roads were poorly constructed or left incomplete.

“You just don’t go and bring that number of road equipment; you haven’t employed operators, so many of the districts do not have grader operators or roller operators to operate the machines, so the machines are still standing there. Aside from that, they didn’t make a budget for fuel,” he said.

"It is a good idea but not well thought through. They hurriedly brought in the equipment for political gimmicks without doing the necessary organisation, so when we come we will take the concept, but we will advertise and recruit the operators, we will train them on how to maintain it, and we will make sure that the district assemblies have the budget to run those equipment.

...We will identify the roads; every district will have to identify the emergency roads to be worked on, and the government will budget for it so that we can give them the money to go out and work on those roads,” he emphasised.