The Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwame Governs Agbodza, has revealed that his outfit has requested the recruitment of about 1,000 additional staff to strengthen operations across its agencies and address widening personnel gaps in the sector.
The sector minister disclosed this when he appeared before Parliament’s Select Committee on Economy and Development, explaining that the request was submitted by the Ministry’s Chief Director in response to growing staffing pressures.
According to him, the demand for additional personnel has become necessary due to the expansion of administrative regions without a corresponding increase in staffing for road agencies. He noted that this has left key technical departments, including engineers and quality assurance personnel, overstretched, affecting the efficiency of project supervision and delivery.
Agbodza indicated that the current staffing levels are insufficient to meet the demands of ongoing infrastructure projects, particularly in newly created regions where institutional capacity remains weak.
He stressed that addressing the personnel gap is critical to improving monitoring, ensuring quality assurance, and strengthening overall service delivery in the road sector.
“The staffing level of the agencies is far less than what it should be. If you consider the fact that we are investing heavily on these projects, part of the reason some of the projects suffer quality assurance is simply because we don’t have enough people to monitor these projects.
“We’ve got approval for 137 staff at various level, QSEs, engineers and everything, but that was just for highways. The chief director has since submitted a request for about 1,000, because don’t forget, we created six new regions and didn’t actually staff them with new staff,” he said.
The Minister assured Parliament that efforts are underway to resolve the staffing challenges and enhance the operational capacity of the Ministry and its agencies.
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