Road Contractors Urged To Form One Front

Mr Magnus Opare- Asamoah, Deputy Minister for Roads and Transportation yesterday asked local road contractors to come together as one united front since there was strength in unity.
    
'It is against this backdrop that, we in the Ministry would like to see a united and strong local road contractors association, prepared to partner with government to execute its roads development and maintenance agenda.'
       
Addressing the new executives of the Association Road Contractors (ASROC) in Accra, the Deputy Minister assured the members of the Ministry's commitment to help find an amicable solution to the problem of disunity among the members.
      
The national executives which has Mr Johannes Twumasi Mensah as National Chairman, Joseph Ebo Hewton, Vice Chairman, Alhaji Muhhamed Aminu as Technical Director and Rexford Kwesi Denkyi, National Treasurer was sworn in.
     
Mr Opare-Asamoah expressed the ministry's gratitude for the immerse contribution to the provision and maintenance of the country's road infrastructure network by the members of ASROC.
     
Mr Opare-Asamoah assured the contractors of the ministry's support in the execution of their programmes and called on them to deliver road projects in accordance to specification and within the contract period.
    
The Deputy Minister assured the members that government would soon deal with the indebtedness problems since it had caused a lot of developmental projects to be stalled.
     
Mr Twumasi-Mensah said the Association was poised to secure the well-being and advancement of the industry of road and civil engineering contractors and promote good road construction in the country.
      
He said contractors had accepted the challenge entrusted to them by the government because road infrastructural projects constituted a major component of the nation's development.  He cited delayed payments of arrears by government, lack of construction equipment, lack of technical and administrative personnel as some of the problems confronting the Association.  
     
Mr Twumasi-Mensah said the ASROC had signed a contract with the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) to sponsor an advocacy programme to mitigate the payment problems facing contractors.
       
He said ASROC was also negotiating with the Ghana AIDS Commission for funds to pursue an HIV/AIDS Workshop Policy Initiative.  'This is an important programme which will help to educate ourselves and our staff in the prevention of the deadly menace for which no cure has been found yet,' he added.
        
He appealed to the members to abide by contract specifications, produce good quality roads and complete them on schedule.