National Chairman of the Association of Road Contractors, John Afful Jnr. has expressed disappointment at the Roads and Highways Ministry for failing to settle a debt owed to contractors contrary to assurances by the sector minister that a chunk of the debt will be paid by the end of October 2022.
Mr. Afful in an interview with the media, says checks indicate that only 10 percent of the funds owed have been paid to contractors as of January 2023 describing it as woefully inadequate.
According to him, the old debt were not added to the new one.
He reveals that contractors were elated by the announcement made by the Ministry to pay them their monies.
” The Honorable Minister assured us of some payments, he mentioned that a chunk of its arrears will be paid, so we were all happy to hear that.
We started going around, in the first week of January. We went to road fund, and we realized that 44 million out of the 5.9 billion Ghana Cedis owed us at end of October. They are paying between 10 and 14 percent of the amount of the certificate there. Even with that, the very old ones were not added to it.
There were certificates at COCOBOD 2017 and 2018, which were not captured and it’s a serious matter over there”, He mentioned.