The Minister of Roads and Highways, Governs Kwame Agbodza, has warned contractors to stop “economising too much” on both human and logistical capacity on site in order not to delay the early completion of roads under the Big Push programme.
He said by engaging in the practice, most contractors working on major roads often refrained from investing enough resources, such as deploying sufficient manpower and machinery needed to finish the work on time.
Stop overloading contractors
The minister, who gave the warning when he led a team of engineers from the ministry and the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) to inspect the 50.3-kilometre Nkwanta-Oti Damango section of the upgrading of the Eastern Corridor Road last Thursday, urged the GHA to stop overloading contractors with too many road projects.
“We should avoid giving contractors too many projects so that they can focus and hand over some major work before we give them another one,” Mr Agbodza said.
The Nkwanta-Oti Damango project, which started on January 5, this year, and expected to be completed in January 2028, is currently 24 per cent complete.
It is being executed by China Jiangxi Engineering Ghana Limited.
Insufficient capacity
During the visit, Mr Agbodza said it was obvious that the contractor did not have enough capacity on site.
He said in spite of the contractor claiming that there were teams working on other sections of the road, “there is only a small team just working here”.
“I mean that is not enough; you are not investing enough in the project, and that is something we are seeing with many of the contractors.
“They are economising too much on having capacity on site, and it is not good enough,” he said.
‘We don’t owe you’
When Mr Agbodza quizzed the contractor if the government still owed him any money in relation to the project, the contractor said “no”.
“For this project, we do not owe you any real money, and so we do not see why you are not working,” he told the contractor.
Expressing dismay at the slow pace of work on the Volivo bridge, which spans the Volta Lake, Mr Agbodza questioned the rationale of “overloading the big contractors with too much work”.
Report poor performance
The minister recalled that on his previous visit, the contractor assured him that they were decommissioning their last project in the Northern Region to bring more capacity to the construction of the Nkwanta-Oti Damango road, but stated that “I cannot see too much capacity here either”.
While acknowledging some improvement in road works by the contractor, Mr Agbodza said he expected more to have been done.
He extended his frustration to most of the contractors along the upgrading of the Eastern Corridor Road for performing less than what “we expected them to”.
He, therefore, tasked the Chief Director of the ministry and the Oti Regional Director of the Ghana Highway Authority to report the poor performance of contractors instead of shielding them.
“Why is it that I am the only one or we are the ones who come to site to see that the contractor is not working?
“Why do we have to come to the site always to notice that they are not working? Or you do not want to offend the contractors?” he asked the GHA officials.
He added that “if you are not ready to offend contractors, then this is not your job because you must be ready to offend people who are not doing what you ask them to do”.
Mr Agbodza reminded the GHA engineers that no contractor was “bigger than you and no contractor is stronger than you”.
“You are the one in charge; we do not hate the contractors, but we are giving them public money, and let them work according to project schedule,” he said.
