Upper East Regional Communications Director of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Peter Ayamga Ayinbisa has welcomed President John Dramani Mahama’s plan to reengineer the District Road Improvement Programme (DRIP).
Addressing people of the region during a visit to thank them following his election in the December 7 polls, Mr. Mahama indicated a plan by his government to reorganize the programme, “into a more effective, Regional Emergency Mobile Maintenance Unit to address the poor quality of roads especially in our rural areas”.
The programme was initiated by the Akufo-Addo administration as part of efforts to decentralize development and improve road networks across the country.
It saw the distribution of sets of equipment to each of the about 260 assemblies to enable them maintain and rehabilitate roads as well as construct new ones.
While in opposition and campaigning in September 2024 ahead of the election, Mr. Mahama criticized the programme as not well thought through and raised concern about the transportation and management of the equipment.
Now as President, he said his administration will reengineer it to make it effective.
Ayinbisa, speaking on behalf of his party, said he was happy that the President has bought into the initiative and would not abandon it like other programmes started by past governments.
“I’m happy that President Mahama has admitted and accepted that the DRIP project was very important, it was very necessary, and that it was introduced at the right time,” he stated.
“In the past, we have had initiatives that are taken on board by the new administrations and usually they abandon some of such projects.”
He, however, warned against centralizing the programme, arguing that could make the equipment hardly accessible to the various assemblies and thus, will defeat the purpose for which it was initiated.
“Our attempt was that it should be available at the district level where convenience is important, where closeness is important, and supervision was very close because the committee that was constituted was constituted at the district level. So they are able to monitor, they are able to quickly give out to people who need the services of the equipment.”
He added, “if we bring it to the regional level, now it means that everything has to come to the region. And we all know the bureaucracy in accessing some services at the regional level”.
