Department of Urban Roads

INTRODUCTION

This report covers activities of the Department of Urban Roads’ Regional Office as at June, 2024.

The region has six (6) municipal assemblies and six (6) district assemblies. However, Municipal Road Engineers (MREs) are currently in four (4) municipalities with the exception of Dormaa Central and Jaman South municipalities.

The total network of inventoried roads for three (3) (Sunyani East, Dormaa Central and Berekum East Municipalities) out of the six (6) Municipal Road Departments currently stands at 1,005km, made of 372km of paved and 633km of unpaved roads based on an update of the 2017 road inventory and condition survey conducted by KNUST as a consultant. There are, however, some unknown length of missing links and un-engineered roads which are yet to be included in the network register. The urban road network in the remaining municipalities is also yet to be inventoried and added to the network register.

The Regional Office’s manpower level presently stands at thirteen (13) made up of Nine (9) technical and 4 administrative staff. The Department has a young workforce with majority of the staff between the ages of 20 and 45 years.

The Department did not receive any moneyfrom GRF and Head Office respectively during the period for supervision.

The Department partially fulfils its mandate through the execution of both routine and periodic projects. Some of the few ongoing periodic projects are describe below under the heading “Maintenance projects”. When undertaking projects, it is important to note that it will usually involve multiple stakeholders and each one potentially can speed up, slow down or completely obstruct the project’s progress.

Some of the challenges within the period included the non-receipt of funds from GRF for supervision, malfunctioning of traffic signals at some important intersections, the lack of modern survey instrument such as RTK equipment and the inability of city authorities to relocate hawkers on existing walkways.

Other activities to improve mobility and connectivity in the region include the upgrading of undeveloped arterial and critical collector roads, asphaltic overlay of aged roads and the construction of culverts to link areas of dislocation or missing links in the road network.

FUNCTIONS

Department of Urban Roads is to provide a cost effective and sustainable integrated urban roads transport system to ensure accessibility, safety, and reliability for national development.

Also to attain an efficient and sustainable urban road transport system that will be responsive to the needs of the society. The function of the Department is to plan, provide, manage and maintain the urban roads network and all related ancillary infrastructure within the road reserve.