<<Print>>

A local contractor, Mr Eric Seddy Kutortse, has challenged the government to offer more road contracts to local contractors, since they have the capacity to deliver equal or even better quality work than their foreign competitors. Mr Kutorse, who is the Chief Executive of First Sky Ltd, a local construction firm, said progress of work by the company on the Dove Junction-Dove-Aveyime road in the Volta Region indicated that local contractors could deliver work on time and with the right specifications. First Sky was awarded the Dove Junction-Dove-Aveyime road in April this year and is expected to complete work in 24 months. However, five months into the contract, the company has already done 55 per cent of the work on the19-kilometre feeder road and promised to finish it well ahead of schedule. The Minister of Roads and Highways, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, made a stopover at the project site on his way to inspect progress of work on the Eastern Corridor road which stretches from the Tema Roundabout in the Greater Accra Region through the Volta and the Northern regions to Kulungugu in the Upper East Region. Mr Kutortse said the company was committed to finishing and handing over the project, adding that it had highly qualified engineers and the human resource who were desirous to put their expertise to work. The company, he explained, had all the equipment and machinery required to execute any job in the road sector. Road works in Volta Region The Volta Regional Director of the Department of Feeder Roads (DFR), Mr Seth Osei, who conducted the minister and his entourage round the project, explained that it was part of a two-year package of the Transport Sector Support Programme in the region, supported by the World Bank, at a cost of GH�23 million. He said the whole package, covering 64 km of feeder roads, had been divided into eight lots, with five in the southern Volta and the remaining three in the middle belt of the region. He said the contract included the-construction of culverts, raising of low lying areas, strengthening of the sub-grade with a base and bitumen dressing. He added that so far the contractor had done the clearing, formation, excavation of side ditches and constructed 31 culverts. On site The Resident Engineer of the contract, Mr Augustine Debourges, explained that the contractor had been able to complete that much because he was permanently on site, seeing to it that work was not halted at any moment. "Secondly, the contractor has a strong labour force. More so, funding is readily available and with the level of progress, I am sure he will complete it well ahead of time," he told the minister. Commendation and caution While commending the contractor, Alhaji Fuseini reminded him that quality was critical in carrying out such a project "because there is no cheap money anywhere". "We need value for money. I hope when this road is finally completed, we won't come back in a year's time to complain that it was not done to specification. We want good roads and the roads must last," he stressed.