Story: Moses Dotsey Aklorbortu, Takoradi
THE Essipon-Sekondi highway, one of the busy roads in the Sekondi/Takoradi metropolis, is being threatened by sea erosion.
Experts say if nothing is done immediately the road could cave in because of the heavy traffic it carries.
Strong tidal waves at Ngyeresia have cut off parts of the road and currently the distance between the road and the sea cliff, measured last Thursday by a civil engineer is less than a metre.
Strangely, motorists, mainly fully loaded timber and quarry trucks, have not noticed the danger and keep plying the road.
Other heavy mining and oil drilling equipment is also transported on this road to and from Takoradi and Home Port of the Western Naval Command.
A private civil engineer who pleaded anonymity after taking the Daily Graphic round the danger spots indicated that if nothing was done immediately it could lead to a serious fatality, since the dangerous cliff is on the blind side of the motoring public.
The current traffic on the road, he said, was too much and was not factored into the initial design of the road and expressed the hope that the authorities would not wait for any disaster before moving to save the situation.
Indications picked by the Daily Graphic were that even though the maintenance of that road falls under the Ministry of Roads and Highways, the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing has to first construct a sea defence wall before any meaningful work could be done.
At the moment, one of the best solutions, the experts said, was to close the road to traffic, which would mean residents from Shama, Ituma, Inchaban and Essipon, would have to detour through Ketan or Kojokrom before entering Sekondi/Takoradi.
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