Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has cut the sod for the construction of an LPG Bottling Plant at Axim in the Nzema East Municipal Assembly (NEMA) in the Western Region.

The plant when completed would help deal with gas explosion occurrences at the various filling stations leading to lose of lives and properties in the country.

The construction of the cylinder bottling plant is a unit of the cylinder recirculation module and has an installation of LPG storage tanks, offloading points for LPG mobile trucks, maintenance building for testing of cylinders and storage facilities for both filled and empty bottles.

It also comes with an installation of water tanks, loading bays and parking lots for LPG bullets trucks, installation of automatic cylinder filling hall designed to have an installed capacity of 2,400 cylinders per day.

The project when completed is expected to create direct and indirect jobs for the citizenry, especially the indigenous people. Addressing a durbar at Axim before the sod cutting ceremony as part of his two-day working visit to the Western Region, Dr. Bawumia recalled that hitherto the country had witnessed rampant gas explosions at the cost of the nation's human resource capital hence, the need for the project.

"As a result, the Government decided that there should be less risky way in the distribution of LPG gas hence tasking the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) to develop a policy content for cabinet's approval to avert the unfortunate occurrences", he explained.

He commended the chiefs for their support for the project through which about 64 acre plots of land have been acquired. He announced that all the technical designs and requirements for the project have been completed.