Mr Samuel Ayeh-Paye
THE first two berths of the first phase of the Tema port expansion project will be completed by June this year, Meridian Port Services (MPS), operators of the port’s terminal, has hinted.
“We will fully operate on that until the third berth is ready in the first quarter of 2020, and that will complete the first phase,” Mohammed Samara, Chief Executive Officer of MPS, told Parliament’s select Committee on Transport in Tema last Friday.
The committee, chaired by Ayensuano Member Parliament, Samuel Ayeh-Paye, was at the site to ascertain the progress of work on the project which began in 2016.
As part of the visit, the lawmakers toured around the project site where heavy duty machines were operating.
According to Mr. Samara, the contractors were ahead of delivering the first phase by four months, adding that financing was not a hinder to the progress of work.
The second phase of the US$1.5 billion project, the biggest in West and Central Africa, he assured, would be completed in June 2022, to open the Tema port to bigger vessels.
When completed, Mr. Samara said the Tema port, to be fitted with modern technology, would be able to accommodate bigger vessels to lower the cost of trade, while enhancing Ghana’s port competitiveness globally.
To him, the technology would not render people jobless, but enhance operations at the port and increase revenue generation for the state, assuring that the expansion was being done with environmental considerations.
Mr. Ayeh-Paye on his part said the committee was impressed with the progress of work and urged the company to consider transferring the expansion technology to Ghanaian engineers as a way of building their capacity.
“I was here less than a year ago, but I can tell you that what I have seen today is a sharp improvement of what I saw previously. This is a clear edifice which is putting this country high on the international scene,” he stated.
Mr. Ayeh-Paye said he was relieved by the news that the technology that was coming with expansion would not render people redundant but rather employ more people.
As part of the expansion, about 150 acres of land had been reclaimed from the sea for the construction of the terminals.
When completed, the port would be able to accommodate 18,000 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU), an inexact unit of cargo capacity often used to describe the capacity of container terminals.
FROM JULIUS YAO PETETSI, TEMA
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