You do not have the right to close schools – Ministry To Contractors

The Ministry of Education has described the bluffing of some aggrieved entrepreneurs who threaten to close the schools that they have built but have not been paid by the government.

The ministry said the contractors do not have the right to do so since the buildings are for the government.

Tuesday, entrepreneurs of the Ghana Association of Building Contractors and Civil Engineering threatened to close all schools they built in the country, if the government did not pay them the full amount due before June 26 2019.

According to the contractors, the government, through the GETFund (Ghana Education Trust Fund), has obtained a loan of $ 1.5 billion to pay the contractors for the work done, without however paying them in full.

Vincent Ekow Assafuah, public relations officer at the Ministry of Education, said in an interview with Citi News that the ministry had still not received a formal complaint from the injured contractors.

"We have not seen any official correspondent of the Association of Contractors. Entrepreneurs have no right to say that they will close their schools. Schools built for and on behalf of the government remain the property of the government, "said Vincent Ekow Assafuah.

He added, however, that the ministry should not view the situation as a deliberate government effort not to pay for it as audits were underway for all projects.

"The Ministry of Education through GETFund is currently engaged in an audit of GETFund to validate many of these contracts. We believe that based on the data we have and some of the investigations, it is clear that we need to validate these contracts. Some of the contracts did not follow the planned award procedure, others did not. So, it's not like an intentional government approach to not paying these entrepreneurs, "said Ekow Assafuah.

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