Half-Baked Contractors Winning Road Contracts

A renowned road contractor has expressed worry over the way and manner licenses are issued to road construction firms in the country. The Managing Director of PMC Africa Limited, Alhaji Abdallah Ahmed-Abdallah, who expressed the worry, emphasized that the processing and issuance of licenses to road construction firms in the country are not the best and that something needed to be done about it, to curb shoddy works in the sector. Speaking to a section of the media in Wenchi, Alhaji Abdallah Ahmed-Abdallah noted that the processes an applicant seeking license for road construction go through must be strengthened to ensure that all requirements are met before licenses are issued out to them. According to him, most of the road accidents in the country could be attributed to shoddy work executed by some of these road contractors who are not only qualified but are also not properly supervised. He reiterated the call on the Ministry of Roads and Highways to review the procedure for giving out license to applicants, since road construction is an area which required lot of money, machines and technical know-how. Alhaji Ahmed-Abdallah noted that some roads and highways constructed in the 80s and 90s were still solid because construction firms were able to meet certain requirements before they were issued with licenses and awarded the contract. �In the 1980s, before a construction firm is issued with either license A2 or A1, a committee set up by the government would investigate the firm and assess its strength and capabilities to ascertain whether the firm can do major road works�, he said . Alhaji Ahmed-Abdallah however alleged that �for the last 10 years the situation has changed as licenses are issued at night to individuals or groups who don�t have even a wheelbarrow� to engage in road construction. He regretted that instead of them to concentrate on minor works such as road shaping, concrete mixture, drainage, gutters and others, construction firms with license B4 and A4, which have limitation find other means to go for bidding and sometimes get major contract to execute. �Because these firms don�t have the required logistics and machines like rollers, tippers and graders, as well as money, they start the project and later abandoned them�, he said. The renowned road contractor cited that in 1995, the then NDC government, led by former President Jerry John Rawlings linked up with the Australian government and contractors came down from Australia to train local Ghanaian road contractors. Alhaji Ahmed-Abadallah noted that such training was very useful to the contractors and was beneficial to the nation, as it broadened the knowledge of the local contractors and introduced them to new areas of their job. He appealed to the government to facilitate similar training programmes to empower the road contractors to enable them do quality job. Alhaji Ahmed-Abdallah stressed the importance for the government to set up an independent committee that would ensure effective monitoring and supervision of road construction. He cited that because of the effective monitoring and supervision, the foreign company which worked on the Cape Coast-Takoradi road about 20 years ago did excellent work, as the road still remained solid, as compared to other highways constructed few years ago. On the appointment of road sector ministers, Alhaji Ahmed-Abdallah advised the government to give priority and pick engineers in the sector who have worked at the Ministry for not less than 15 years.