The minister-designate for Roads and Highways, Kwesi Amoako Attah, has disclosed that the delay in settling road contractors was due to the coronavirus pandemic.

During his vetting at the Parliament House today, February 16, 2021, the Roads and Highways Minister-designate, Mr. Amoako-Attah said revenue generation went down during the pandemic, this he adds affected the payments of monies owed contractors.

“There are outstanding payments and efforts are being made [to settle them], as and when monies are released to the Ministry. We must not lose track of the difficulties we all went through as a government and a nation with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Resources of the nation, in terms of revenue, went down and that also impacted negatively on our payment regime. We are hoping that this trend will change and contractors will see an improvement in the payment regime,” he told the Appointments Committee.

He added that there is no deliberate attempt for the government to delay payment of contractors but rather more efforts are being made to ensure that contractors are paid for their works with no discrimination.

“I will not sit here and say all contractors in this country have been paid on schedule, even though the government, in the past four years, has made great effort to pay all contractors for their good work. It’s not in the interest of the government to delay payments because of the huge interest accrued as a result.”

“Contractors are supposed to be paid within 90 days, and great effort has been made from time to time to get that done. We’ve followed strict payment regimes and have been very fair in paying contractors. We do not discriminate in terms of payment,” he clarified.