A group of contractors who have done government contracts and are owed by the state for over five years have had cause to complain about the manner in which some selected few contractors suspected to be affiliated with officials in government are being paid whiles the rest appears to have been neglected.
Just last week, on the 9th December 2023, the Minister for roads, Hon. Amoako-Atta had released a list of some 18 contractors to be paid ghc500, 000,000.00
In an exclusive interview with a couple of these aggrieved contractors who had visited this paper to state their case, they said, in the last two or three years, government have made two separate payments and “if you check those payments and the contractors involved, it leaves no doubt as to the trend or manner in which government have decided to effect contract payments which had delayed for years”.
They alleged; ” we are in the same business or profession and we know each other, some of us are friends with each other so we know who is who, that’s how come we are peaved with the manner they are making payments”.
“At least if the selection criteria was random, some of us would have understood and exercise patience because we know the government can’t pay all of us at the same time but we certainly cannot appreciate the way they are going about these payments,” they stressed.
They continued saying; “some of us borrowed from banks to execute those government projects and the interest alone on our borrowed sum is killing and so government have really got to sit up and clear it’s indebtedness to us because we are really suffering.”
” We won’t mention names but we know a few of our colleagues that have developed all kinds of illness because of this same tango with government over non-payments of our contract sums,” they added.
“We hope that through your medium, government will listen to us and expedite payments or at least spread it even or randomly to satisfy everyone but certainly not the way they are going about it now… It’s one sided.” they pleaded.
