The Minister of Roads and Highway, Hon. Kwasi Amoako-Atta has revealed that most contractors in the country are dying out of frustration following the inability of government to settle its indebtedness to them.

He revealed that some of the contractors since 2010 have not been paid for work done which is why most of them abandon sites because their certificates raised have not been honored by government.

“I have records to show that some of them since 2010 have not been paid……road construction it is a continuous process and when you stop at a point for nonpayment of certificate raised, it leads to some of the shoddy work we witness. We cannot blame the contractors sometimes but this is a very sad situation”, he added.

This coupled with loans contracted from the banks by these contractors worsen their plight as they end up incurring losses indicating that they are not solely to blame for abandoning projects.

“Under the normal practices, contractors who complete their jobs must be paid in full within 90 days but we have some of them who have done work since 2010 and are yet to be paid. This has resulted in the frustration of the contractors leading to premature deaths in the wake of banks also chasing them for monies they borrowed”, he revealed on Wednesday.

According to him, the current government under President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has initiated payment plans for the unpaid contractors under road fund and disbursed a total of GHS600 million to them so far.