Road debate: We’ve not been paid for 5 years – Contractors

Road contractors have blamed delayed and nonpayment of work done by government for the bad roads that exist in the country.

According to them, over the last five years, government has failed to pay mobilization fee to enable local contractors continue with the work they do.

The concerns come in the wake of the back and forth between the President and the NDC over the number of roads that were constructed under the erstwhile Mahama administration.

“Per our agreement, contractors are to be given 15-20% of the contract sum as advanced mobilization by the employer. For about 5 years now, the government has stopped paying the mobilization fee. We look for loans to construct loans and they fail to pay after work is done,” a member of the contractors union Akoa Kofi Owusu told Morning Starr host Francis Abban on Wednesday.

Another contractor, Kwadwo Okyere Darkwa bemoaned: “When construction starts and not completed, it goes bad. When contractors are not paid , they cannot finish work started and that gives rise to bad roads”.

President Akufo-Addo stocked the road construction debate when dared the former Mahama administration to show proof of work done in the road sector.

“The deceptions of the past, like the Minister (of Roads and Highways) has said, will no longer be a part of our future,” he said.

The President recounted how, in 2016, he said he was yet to see the so-called “unprecedented infrastructural projects” touted by his predecessor, John Dramani Mahama.

“He (Mahama) told me that I was asleep at the back of my car when I was going around the country, and that was why I was not seeing the infrastructure. And, yet, ever since I came into office, that is all they keep asking for – ‘our roads, our roads’. If the roads had been done, would they be asking for that?” President Akufo-Addo asked.

However, former Roads minister Alhaji Fuseini said the president is “deceiving” Ghanaians after cancelling most road contracts after assuming office.

“The president’s logic is warped,” Mr. Fuseini told Starr News.

“In 2016 John Mahama travelled the length and breadth of this country, did you record people carrying placards complaining… NPP came into office and stopped all the works. You can’t continue deceiving the people all the time,” Alhaji Fuseini stated.