Bede Ziedeng, Member of Parliament for Lawra in the Upper West Regional has recounted fondly to A1 Radio, the growth and expansion that the Wa Airport has seen since its inception under Jerry John Rawlings’ PNDC/NDC era.
Speaking on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East, Mr. Ziedeng who was a Deputy Minister for the region under Former President Jerry John Rawlings recalled that the airport used to be a military strip just for military aircraft “from the late 80s to the early 90s”.
With the former MP for Wa West Joseph Yileh Chireh as Upper West Regional Minister, the then gravelled airstrip saw some development. The then Minister for Transport, the late Edward Saalia was contacted. Later, the airstrip received a bituminous surface facelift, the runway was also extended to accommodate larger aircraft. “This was done sometime between 1995 and the year 2000,” he recounted.
After the extension of the runway, a terminal was constructed between 2009 and 2016. Mr. Ziedeng alleged that after the NDC lost power, the NPP failed to continue the work that had already begun for fear that the party will not get credit for the work that would be done stressing that “they decided to delay before finally commissioning the terminal”.
Mr. Ziedeng said after the commissioning of the facility, it was expected that flights would begin immediately but that did not happen.
African World Airlines came in 2019 to begin flights to and from Wa, the Upper West Regional capital. During the waiting period, the MP reckoned that he encouraged Antrak Air and AWA to consider making the flights.
The flights stopped after a resolution of all the problems that existed. This, according to the MP, led to him filing questions to the Minister of Transport on the Floor of Parliament sometime in October last year.
The MP for Lawra was filing the questions was curious about why flights to the Wa Airport had stopped and why there were only 3 scheduled flights to the region when other airports in Tamale and Kumasi operated daily flights.
After the Minister of Transport’s response in Parliament, the Upper West Regional Minister on his Facebook page disclosed that daily flights to and from the Wa Airport would begin from next week.
Meanwhile, according to the MP for Lawra, checks he conducted show that while there is interest by Passion Air to begin daily flights, no clear start-by date has been given yet.
A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
