Probe Adomi bridge contract - Workers plead

Twenty workers engaged by the Ghana Highways Authority (GHA) for the renovation of Adomi Bridge at Atimpoku in the Eastern Region, have called for a probe into allegations of impropriety in the award of the renovation contract for the bridge.

Making the appeal through the Chronicle at Atimpoku, the workers expressed grave concern about the circumstances surrounding the award of the contract and the role played by some executive members of the GHA.

According to the workers, who spoke to the Chronicle on condition of anonymity, they were approached about two months ago by Mr. Dagadu, the GHA director, who engaged them for the renovation work. During the negotiations, Chronicle learnt, they (the 20 workers) were made to believe that the job was awarded to Messrs Ussuya Construction Company and that they were being employed by the GHA on behalf of Ussuya.

The sources added that the workers were also made to accept that, even though Ussuya had won the contract, the company did not have the manpower and expertise to undertake the renovation work on the bridge. The workers’ suspicions were further heightened when after working for one month on the bridge, Messrs. Ussuya, who the GHA claimed had won the contract, are yet to set foot at the project site.

“For more than one month that we started work on the bridge, we have not set our eyes on the contractor and our belief is that since the Director of Bridges, Mr. Dagadu, had assumed the role of the contractor instead of his known role as the supervisor for GHA, something had actually gone wrong in the whole deal,” the workers complained They also expressed their dissatisfaction about their salaries and lack of insurance coverage for them looking at the risky nature of the work they were undertaking , although the last time that the bridge was awarded for the renovation , the workers were covered with an insurance.

The workers revealed that whenever the issue of poor remuneration was raised they were told by Dagadu that that he had conveyed their grievance to the contractor, but,they said, nothing has not been done about their plight . When the Chronicle contacted the foreman of the workers, Mr. Akron Mensah, over this and other issues, he said he did not know the name of the company which he was representing and asked this reporter to contact the GHA for the name of the contractor.