The situation, the Chamber said, had led to the death of some members, others bedridden, while some had been sued in the court by their financiers over delays in paying back the loans.

Speaking at a press briefing on Friday, May 24, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, Finance Minister, said the government had spent about GH¢49 billion to pay contractors.

However, Mr Emmanuel Cherry, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Construction Chamber in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Monday, May 27, denied knowledge of receiving such money.

He gave a narration about the condition that many contractors found themselves as a result of government’s non-payment.

“Every day, labourers and professionals, financial institutions, cement dealers, and fuel suppliers, are all calling and demanding for their money from one contractor, bringing untold thinking and health difficulties to us,” he said.

“Some contractors have died. There’s one contractor in good standing who is currently bedridden and cannot do anything; I spoke with the wife last week Friday, and even money to take care of him is a problem. A lot of them are also in court,” Mr Cherry added.

The money that contractors receive are segregated into various components, including payment of interest on loans, which leaves many about five per cent or a maximum of 10 per cent of the contract sum, he explained.

“So, if the contractor works and the certificate that’s supposed to have been honoured within 91 days travels to 600 days or 1,000 days and over, the financial institutions that loan money to the contractor will convert their simple interest into compound interest, because there’s a default.

Therefore, at the end of the day, if a contractor is being paid, all those monies go to the financial institutions, without a drop left for the contractor… some contractors have now become blacklisted,” he said.

A breakdown of the debt as provided by Mr Cherry included GH¢6bn owed contractors since 2017, accumulated from Road Fund projects, and GH¢5bn from Government of Ghana contracts since 2019.

The rest are GH¢4.4bn Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) road projects accumulated from 2014 – of which GH¢1bn has been paid in the last month, and GH¢600 million Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) projects.

Mr Cheery also stated that some debts were also owed contractors in the Energy sector as well as the government’s recent Agenda 111 hospital projects.

He, therefore, stated that if the said GH¢49bn had been paid, a number of halted projects across the country would have resumed, and the pace of work increased, which is not the case at the moment.

The Chamber’s CEO, however, said they were willing to jaw jaw with the government for a solution regarding the payment of debts, adding, “should things not go well, the government will see the other side of us [contractors].”

He stated that the Chamber had already initiated steps in that regard and were scheduled to meet with the Works and Housing Minister on May 27, with another meeting expected with the Finance Minister later in this week.

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In all, 867 claims from contractors who had presented valid certificates of work were settled.

The projects executed by the contractors include the construction of classrooms, dormitories, laboratories, administration blocks, dining halls and hostel blocks.

Others are assembly halls, underground water tanks, staff flats and lavatories of various sizes.

The GETFund has also honoured payments for the supply of bunk beds, furniture, electrical items, vehicles for some schools, as well as rehabilitation works on some school infrastructure.

The Administrator of the fund, Dr Richard Ampofo Boadu, disclosed this to the Daily Graphic in an interview yesterday.

The interview was a follow-up to a pledge the administrator had made to the contractors at a stakeholder engagement forum in Accra last month.

Dr Boadu had assured the gathering that processes were far advanced to pay claims covering over 867 certified interim payment certificates (IPCs) on projects and supplies across the levels of education sector.

Regional breakdown

He said 322 of the projects were at the secondary level, 244 at the tertiary, 269 at the basic, while 19 were for the Ministry of Education and its agencies, with 13 of them being contracts for supplies.

The Ashanti Region had the highest number of 161 projects across all levels, followed by the Eastern Region with 146, while the Bono East, Oti, Savannah and Western North regions had one project each, he said.

Breakdown of payments

Dr Boadu added that 271 of the paid contractors were working on basic school projects, amounting to GH¢40.93 million, while payments for second-cycle schools covered 351 certificates, totalling GH¢434.73 million.

For the tertiary sector, 242 claims at GH¢188.85 million were paid, while other claims from the Ministry of Education amounted to GH¢3.29 million.

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He explained that the payments were made through a mix of funding sources, made up of proceeds from the Daakye Plc Bond issuance and government releases through the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) to the GETFund.

He said the processes for such payments, which began in mid-October 2022 with the signing of novation agreements with contractors covering the 867 claims, ended last month, with the accounts of all beneficiary contractors duly credited.

“It must be noted that the Daakye payments covered mainly emergency projects that were awarded between 2017 and 2022 and certificates received on or before September 30, 2022.

“The tertiary sector claims covered about 92 per cent of certificates on legacy projects inherited by the current administration and received and prepared on or before September 30, 2022, by the GETFund.

“We would like to assure contractors that plans are in place to settle all outstanding certificates in an effort to complete stalled projects in our schools within the next three years,” the administrator said.

Situation

Last October, the Ghana Chamber of Construction Industry (GhCCI) demanded that the government should pay arrears of GH¢10 billion owed for various infrastructural projects executed by its members.

It threatened to go to court if the government failed to fulfil its financial obligation to the contractors to retrieve their money.

The Chief Executive Officer of the GhCCI, Emmanuel Cherry, explained that the amount included debt owed to us by the Road Fund, COCOBOD, the Consolidated Fund, as well as the GETFund.”