As well as architecture and design, our experience of program planning, construction, and provision of medical staff for General Hospitals...
According to the contractors, although they were contracted to execute the affordable housing project during the previous NPP administration, the contract came to a halt with the introduction of the failed STX housing project by the present government.
They indicated that the period for their contract with Government had expired but the project had not been completed due to its suspension.
Government, they said, owed them huge sums of money.
Even though DAILY GUIDE learnt that the project was started with local contractors, six of the houses had been given to Chinese contractors who have completed them for soldiers to occupy.
The contractors recalled a series of meetings with the Minister of Water Resources Works and Housing, Enoch Teye Mensah, to look for the way forward but this had not yielded any positive development.
At a meeting attended by the contractors in Accra last Thursday, a number of them said that although Mr E.T. Mensah had on Tuesday, July 10, 2012, assured them of Government’s willingness to go on with the project, they had since not heard from him.
They claimed that the minister had failed to answer their phone calls or respond to all letters written to him.
The only response they received from the ministry, after a meeting with Mr Mensah, was a letter signed by the project co-ordinator, one E. Banning, which requested all the contractors and the subcontractors to indicate in writing their preparedness to continue with the contract for Ghana Affordable Housing Project at Borteyman and Kpone.
Furthermore, the letter reminded them that Government was ready to commence the project.
According to the contractors, on July 13, 2012, they responded to the letter, indicating their preparedness to continue with the contract but would prefer that the whole contract is reviewed, considering the lapsed period.
The contractors lamented that since then, they had not heard from the minister, adding that follow-up reminders had hit dead ends.
They lamented that to date, they had not paid the loans they secured for the project, resulting in a huge financial liability.
“This is because the banks are charging us huge interests which have been accruing since the loans were secured three-four years ago,” they explained.
They revealed to DAILY GUIDE that at one of their meetings with the minister, he proposed that as there was no money available for the project, the contractors should decide on whether they would be willing to use their own funds to continue it while arrangements were made for Government to reimburse them later or wait until government had the financial muscle.
The minister also allegedly told them that Government had now concluded an agreement with private developers to support the scheme in order to raise some money to defray or settle the debts of the existing contractors.
The contractors noted that they were rather surprised when the minister told a different story when he took his turn at the Meet-the-Press series organized by the Ministry of Information.
They therefore wrote to the minister and gave him an ultimatum to respond to their concerns and set the records straight to enable them to know their fate.
“It is over a month now since we wrote to him but we still have not heard from him and therefore we do not know the Government’s position and our fate although we are still being chased by our bankers”.
According to the contractors, their main worry was that though they were assured that funds from the HIPC Initiative would be used to support the project, no contractor had benefited from the about $200million said to have been channeled into the project.
“We think that the Government is not sensitive to our plight. We want the Government to come out clearly to tell us the truth and declare her position on the project following the suspension of our contract four years on, while the interest on the loans we secured from our bankers have raised to astronomical levels and has therefore become too much for us to pay,” they said.
The Affordable Housing Project was initially funded with an amount of GH¢40 million from government’s benefits of declaring the nation a Highly Indebted Poor Country HIPC and an additional GH¢30million sourced from the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).
The projects are located in selected areas including Borteyman, Nungua, Kpone, Asokore-Mampong, Koforidua, Tamale and Wa, with the housing units at various stages of completion.
By Stella Danso Addai
No comments :
Post a Comment