Sekondi, April 23, GNA- Mrs. Elisabeth Ama Nkrumah, Western Regional Officer of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) and Social Investment Fund (SIF) has said that poverty reduction should not be restricted to the provision of money but an improvement in the lifestyles of the people.

Poverty stricken communities should benefit from development programmes and the provision of infrastructure based on the choice of the people, she added.

Mrs Nkrumah was addressing a day's workshop organised by GPRS/SIF for small-scale contractors operating within the region. Over one hundred participants are attending the workshop, which had the theme "Removing bottlenecks from project implementation".

She said the nine districts in the Western Region, benefited from 100 projects including school blocks, rural clinics, nurses quarters, and boreholes all valued at 17.4 billion cedis.

Mrs Nkrumah said out of this figure, the GPRS/SIF has paid 8.5 billion to contractors who have completed their projects. She called on contractors to take proper stock of materials and ensure that they visited sites and ensure that work was done according to specification.

She regretted that some contracts awarded during the first phase of implementation programme had to be terminated due to several problems including lack of understanding of SIF's objective.

Mrs Nkrumah said the project would enter its second phase in January 2005 and it was expected that contractors would adopt best constructional practices, and understand the role of the sub-project management committee.

Mr. Richard Quaynor from the Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI) told the participants to ensure that their documents were ready before they bid for any projects.

He said most contractors provide old documents, conflicting figures on their bid documents while others failed to sign the legal attachments for projects.