Consulting Engineers blame govt for its operational weaknesses
The Ghana Consulting Engineers Association (GCEA) have blamed their inability to expand their operations to be able to compete properly with foreign counterparts in the country on the inability of government to promptly pay them for services rendered.
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With the government being the biggest client of consulting engineers, the newly sworn-in President of the association, Mr Albert A. Ogyiri, said the habitual delay in paying engineers for consultancy services meant that their ability to procure new softwares as well as train and retain their staff was continually on the line.
The result, he said, was the mass exit of qualified staff from local companies into foreign firms or countries, which then weakens the capacity of the local firms to expand and compete properly.
He raised the concern at his swearing-in ceremony in Accra. He was elected to replace Mr F. Asare-Yeboah, who retired earlier this year after two years of service. He will now serve in that capacity for the next two years.
Impact on investment
The GCEA, which was founded in 1973, is the umbrella body of professional consulting engineers in the country. Over the years, members of the association have in diverse ways, supported the government in the development of key infrastructure projects nationwide. Notable among them is the Aburi-Accra Road, the Accra Shopping Mall, West Hills Shopping Mall, the expansion of the Kpong Water Project and the Achimota-Ofankor Highway.
While these services have helped to shape the country and improve the lot of the economy and the Ghanaian in particular, payments for those consultancies have always delayed, with some running into years.
This is detrimental to the progress of the local companies, Mr Ogyiri told the Daily Graphic after the ceremony.
"We do not have the capital to invest in equipment. In engineering, you need to continuously invest in equipment such as software. Unfortunately, many companies are not able to do that mainly because their services are not paid on time. In some cases, it is not paid at all," he said.
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"That is why we tend to lag behind and then the foreigners come in and take the business," he explained.
Govt's response
To help avoid this in future transactions, the president of the GCEA said the government needed to always make sure that funds were available before projects were commissioned for construction.
He explained that the tendency to start work without any defined source of funding was inimical to the country's finances and consultant engineers in particular and should therefore be avoided.
Mr Pelpuo, who lauded the association for supporting government's infrastructure development agenda over the years, later told the paper that government had already taken note of the concerns and was instituting measures to address them.
Those measures, he said, included the decision to ensure that only projects with available funds were commissioned for work.