50 Contractors Lose Contracts

The Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing has terminated the contracts of 50 contractors working on the government's affordable housing projects for failure to deliver.

The sector minister, Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic, said 14 of the contractors were at the Borteyman site, 11 at Asokore Mampong and 25 at the Kpone site.

He made this known when he took journalists on a tour of the government's affordable housing projects at the Kpone and Borteyman sites Saturday.

“As far as I am concerned I have signed for the termination of their contracts. All the contracts were awarded at the same time as those that have been terminated,” he said, adding that some contractors had not been to the sites for some months now, although they had been given mobilisation funds.

At the sites workers were seen busily working, with most of them plastering some of the buildings. It was realised that while some buildings had been roofed, others were yet to be partitioned.

The Project Engineer at the Kpone site, Mr Joseph Kofi Allotey, said 16 of the flats which had been plastered were ready for painting and that those 16 flats contained 200 units of houses.

Alhaji Boniface said one of the major constraints was financing and that with the President's endorsement and parliamentary approval of GH¢30 million, access to that amount was expected from this week.

“The SSNIT has prepared all the documentation and we are due for the first draw of the facility some time next week. So we expect that the contractors will now begin to have access to money to purchase the necessary materials,” he stated.

He said amenities such as water, electricity and road for the projects had gone on tender and that hopefully, from the next week or two, contractors will be on site working on them.

That, he said, would go on concurrently with the inauguration of the buildings that were almost complete at the end of next month.

At Borteyman, the Chief Supervisor of Habitat Ghana Limited, Alhaji Mohammed, expressed concern over the delay in having access to blocks, although he had been given mobilisation funds.

He said about 200 bags of cement were caking as a result of the lack of blocks to work with and urged the minister to give them the go-ahead to secure blocks from other sources.

The minister said blocks were expected to be supplied from this week and indicated that consultants would be allowed to secure blocks from others sources provided they (blocks) could meet the standard requirement.

Story by Emmanuel Bonney