The Upper East Regional Coordinating Council (UERCC) has announced it will soon sever ties with contractors who fail to live up to expectations on the projects awarded them.

The announcement comes in strong terms after a tour of the Bongo District by the Upper East Regional Minister, Albert Abongo, Friday had exposed some abandoned projects and a number of poorly executed jobs in the area.

But members of the Association of Road Contractors (ASROC) in the region have fought back, faulting government for allegedly awarding contracts not on merit but only to individuals who engage in open, partisan politicking.

The Regional Minister, who visited the district accompanied by his deputy, Dr. Robert Baba Kuganab-Lem and a team of engineers to inspect the conditions of its roads, told the press shortly after the tour government would thenceforth blacklist non-performing contractors in the region.

“For contractors who have had jobs and have abandoned them, we should have an eye on them, so that when we see them coming back to bid for some jobs we leave them out. So, I would urge the engineers to be on the lookout for such contractors. And also shoddy works; as we moved around you [could] see. We are blacklisting. We will blacklist them so they don’t bid for jobs in the region,” he affirmed.

Crumbling culverts litter district

The disappearance of a contractor from site in the district shortly after he had been engaged to work on some disintegrating box culverts on the Yorogo-Dua-Begorogo Road was one of the major highlights that turned the tour sour.

Crashes have become the order of the day owing to the awful state of that road. The contractor was employed to reshape the road. But, according to authorities at the Department of Feeder Roads, he abandoned site soon after he had only demolished a collapsed culvert.

Despite the risks the collapsing culverts pose to road users, travellers including schoolchildren and persons with physical disabilities cannot avoid them as they are the only available structures that link a number of communities separated by a river in the district. Fears are rife the abandoned structures could be swept away by flood waters in the approaching rainy season, in what certainly would see several communities cut off from the rest of the district.

“He was actually supposed to reshape the road and put in that particular culvert which had virtually collapsed. After the demolishing of the existing culvert, he was supposed to have come to do the planning and construct the culvert, but then he abandoned site. And once the project went beyond three months [delay], we were compelled to terminate it. The project has been terminated for over three years now. The project has been advertised. It was advertised in the Ghanaian Times I think last week,” the Deputy Upper East Regional Manager of Department of Feeder Roads, Stephen Quainoo, disclosed.

Residents bitter about collapsed structures

The tour attracted some residents to the scenes of the inspection. The visit, for them, marked the beginning of an end to some untold difficulties associated with the state of their roads. For some, it was a rare opportunity to tell government the annual losses they have continued to suffer on the roads particularly during the rainy season.

“Whenever it rains heavily, the water overflows. The whole area gets flooded. For example, last year when it happened, about six of my animals, goats and sheep, six of them, water carried them away, together with my farm. My rooms were full of water,” Rockson Sulemana Azure, former assemblyman for Boko, told journalists during the tour.

A senior high school student, Mubarik Anongre, told Starr News at Balungu, one of the toured communities: “Look at the way the thing is. Some of the big cars cannot pass. Can’t you see? Government has to come and repair it. It’s just going to collapse like that. We [are always afraid] to cross especially during the raining season.”

Residents of Namoo, another suburb of the district are also seriously confronted with some collapsed culverts. The Upper East Regional Director of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA), Mohammed Abdallah Billey, told the media during a joint debriefing with the Regional Minister some repair work of the washout would be carried out at the box culvert location at Namoo as soon as possible before the rainy months set in.

Road contractors fight back

Reacting to the Regional Minister’s blacklist announcement, regional executives of the ASROC told Starr News there would have been fewer substandard structures in the region if the UERCC had involved more ASROC members in the execution of projects.

“They have not given recognition to our association. They hand over a list of projects to the civil servants and they do the allocation the way the civil servants want since Mark Woyongo’s time. As for the present minister, I can vouch for him because he has just come. The award of the contract is not based on merit. If you are a party foot soldier, you can be asked to go and do something and in the end the person hasn’t got the capacity to do it. So, it results in failure of course. This would not be the case if we were involved because as an association we would bring any member who does a shoddy job to book,” the Regional Chairman of ASROC, Eric Asumda, said.

They also pointed out nonpayment of monies due contractors as a major factor brewing the shoddy jobs often delivered in the region.

“As an association, the general concern is that they don’t pay fast. For instance, if you are given a road to do gravelling and bitumen, you would submit certificate for them to go and buy bitumen to come and do it. They delay in payment for over six months. The road would deteriorate. But if they pay in good time, you would come and meet the road in good compaction condition; then, you can go ahead. Foreign contractors are paid without delay. Local contractors are not treated like that. But because there are no jobs, people don’t have the option; they take it like that,” Mubarik Alid, Technical Adviser to ASROC, stated.

Whilst Robert Waale, a member of the association, blamed the plague of defectively done jobs in the region on contractors who do not have licence but are engaged by the regional coordinating council, another member of the group, Newton Awuviri, described the blacklist move as “baseless”.

“For about four, five years now we have not been given jobs. There is nothing going on. The announcement to blacklist contractors who fail to perform well is baseless. Even when you work they don’t pay you. So, how can they talk of not performing well? You go and borrow money, do the job; then, after that, it takes two years, if you are lucky, to get paid,” Mr. Awuviri grumbled.