The Roads and Highways Minister-designate, Kwasi Amoako-Attah has disclosed that, government experienced some delay in redeeming outstanding payments to road contractors due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the country.
Speaking before the Parliament Appointment’s Committee during his vetting at the Parliament House today, February 16, 2021, Mr. Amoako-Attah stated that the pandemic played a critical role in the failure of the Road ministry to settle payments to road contractors as it placed undue stress on the country and the country’s revenue in an attempt to manage the situation.
“There are outstanding payments and efforts are being made [to settle them], as and when monies are released to the Ministry. We must not lose track of the difficulties we all went through as a government and a nation with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Resources of the nation, in terms of revenue, went down and that also impacted negatively on our payment regime. We are hoping that this trend will change and contractors will see an improvement in the payment regime”.
Mr. Amoako-Attah did not deny the plight and handicap of the ministry, he however, explained that government will by no mean benefit from the delay as it will progressively incur high interest rate in the course of time.
“I will not sit here and say all contractors in this country have been paid on schedule, even though the government, in the past four years, has made great effort to pay all contractors for their good work. It’s not in the interest of the government to delay payments because of the huge interest accrued as a result.
“Contractors are supposed to be paid within 90 days, and great effort has been made from time to time to get that done. We’ve followed strict payment regimes and have been very fair in paying contractors. We do not discriminate in terms of payment”.
Last year, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Construction Industry, Emmanuel Cherry, said the construction industry had complained about debts owed road contractors in the country purportedly hovering around almost $2 billion.
Mr. Cherry speaking on the matter indicated that government had justified their delay in payment to their inheritance of a huge debt from the previous government. He further stated that although an ultimatum was given to the government in October 2020, they had still not received any information on their payments.
Prior to this, Mr. Cherry had urged government to engage local contractors in the construction of roads in 2021. Following the declaration of 2021 as the second year of roads by President Akufo-Addo, he stated the move will create jobs and generate income for the contractors and other Ghanaians.
To achieve this, Mr. Cherry said, government must rank local content first in road construction. As such, while government is trying as much as possible to give the “juicy contracts to the foreigners”, he argues they must as well endeavor to at least introduce “local content or ownership content”.
