Contractors working on GETFund projects across the country say they will embark on a demonstration next Tuesday to demand payment of monies owed them by the government.
According to the contractors, government owes them over five hundred million Ghana cedis spanning a period of six months. One of the affected contractors, Daniel Tanor, told Citi News the Ministry of Finance has delayed the payment, a situation he says is crippling their businesses, since most of them go for loans to pre-finance the projects.
“For the past five, six months, we have not been paid. We have been going to GETFund premises all this while, and the story has been for us to come the next week that but nothing happens. We have been able to find out that Ministry of Finance has not given GETFund money to pay the contractors.
We came to conclusion that, the only thing we can do is to demonstrate. If we do that the President will listen to us. If we are not paid up to Tuesday 11:00am, all GETFund contractors will hit the streets.
“We will move to the presidency, that is the Flagstaff House. If we do not see the president then we will go to his House and tell him that banks are chasing us, even on Xmas day some of the contractors were not even at home because suppliers and banks were chasing all of them.
Government is owing contractors more than 500 million cedis. Individually, 2 million, 5 million. We are urging all GET Fund contractors to converge on GET Fund premises on Tuesday morning. We will walk to the Flagstaff House. We are more than 1,000”
In July 2014, Getfund Contractors Association threatened to lock all school buildings they had constructed if government failed to pay outstanding arrears owed for the work done.
The Association said the lack of payments to its members was negatively affecting their families.
In an interview with Citi News, a member and contractor of the Getfund Contractors Association, George Agbo, indicated that locking the various schools would be necessary if payments are not made.
“After the demonstration, if nothing is done, we will go to all the schools and close them down. We will go to all the schools and take our keys”.
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