In a bid to finally make the Wa Airport commercially operational, further safety tests have to be done on the facility in keeping with the International Civil Aviation Organizations (ICAO) standards.
To this end, the Deputy Minister of Aviation, Yaw Afful, the Deputy Upper West Regional Minister, Amidu Chinnia Issahaku and some officials of Engineering Services Provision Company Ltd, the consultants tasked to do the safety assessment have visited the Wa Airport.
GBCs Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo reports that the Director of Projects of the Ghana Airports Company Limited, Yaw Appiah-Danquah conducted Messrs Afful and Issahaku around the Wa Airport
The Deputy Aviation Minister, Afful who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Jaman South in the Bono Region explained rationale behind the visit to Wa, saying: “Our purpose of being here today is in the name of safety, as most of you are aware, Ghana is ranked first in aviation safety. We just had an audit at the Aviation Ministry and we scored 89.89% that is the highest you can get in Africa. So in order not to jeopardize that, anything that we do as a country or as government, we need to make sure safety is always first”.
“We are here today with our consultants to make sure that the pavement strength, the apron and all the concrete works here have the strength required by the regulators to be able to allow aircrafts to land and take-off from this airport. We all know that the people of Wa have been crying to have aircraft patronize this airport, the government is also interested in making sure that, that is done, because once you have aircrafts coming in and out, it will help businesses, once businesses are doing, it helps the economy as well, he added.
The Managing Director of Engineering Services Provision Company Limited (ESPco), Desbordes Viala talked about the pavement classification number (PCN) which relates to the work to be done at the Wa Airport within a month.
Mr. Viala mentioned the three areas that ESPco was going to work on as “the taxi way, runway and apron” by checking the strength of the existing pavements and comparing them with the [Aircraft Classification Number], ACN then determining the categories of aircrafts that can use the pavements.
The Deputy Upper West Regional Minister, Chinnia Issahaku expressed the sentiments of the people on how they have been yearning for a commercial flight from Wa.
He observed that: “Any mention about anything concerning the airport, the people of upper West are always interested to hear because we have been waiting for a while now. This month alone, I led two different teams to meet President Akufo-Addo, the Regional House of Chiefs led by the Tumu Kuoro, we met with the President at the Jubilee house and one of the biggest cry of the House of Chiefs was about the Wa Airport. The President pledged that he will talk to the authorities to see how fast they can work in respect of their cry,” Mr. Issahaku averred.
He stated that the chiefs and people of Upper West cannot wait any longer to have the Wa airport to become operational.
Story by Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo
