General News of Monday, 22 January 2018
Source: classfmonline.com
2018-01-22
Information Minister, Mustapha Hamid
Government insists it has paid more than half of the GHC1.6 billion owed contractors in the country despite claims by some contractors working on projects for the Ghana Education Trust Fund [GETFund] that they have not been paid.
Speaking at an encounter with the media at the Flagstaff House on Wednesday, 17 January 2018, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said his government had settled most of the arrears owed contractors which accrued under the Mahama administration.
“I’m being urged to pay contractors, I’m paying them. In 2017, nearly one billion cedis of which the government of Ghana provided three hundred odd million and the Road Fund provided some 660 million of the 1.6 billion owed road contractors was cleared. In January this year, we have dispersed 125 million out of the remainder of 600 million to the contractors,” he said.
“Additionally, we have paid 826 million of the 1.2 billion loan contracted by the previous administration for which the Road Fund was used as collateral. It is important to note that all these debts were accrued under the previous administration. I will also point out that much of the statutory arrears that we met have been cleared,” Nana Akufo-Addo added.
But the contractors shortly after this statement came out to say they disagreed with what the president said, adding that most of them have not received any payments from the government for almost two years.
But Minister of Information, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, at a press conference on Monday, 22 January 2018, insisted contractors have been paid.
He said: “Government has taken note of a public statement by some GETFund contractors that ‘majority’ of them have not been paid. While we do not wish to engage them on a banter on semantics, we wish to reiterate that everything that the president said at his press encounter last Wednesday was a true reflection of the state of government indebtedness to contractors generally.
“Out of the ghs1.6 billion that the government owed to contractors, GHS838 million was what was owed to GETFund contractors. GHS470 million of that amount has been paid to them. There is an outstanding bill of GHS367 million to be cleared. So, surely, the bulk of what was owed to GETFund contractors has been paid.”