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President John Dramani Mahama has urged individuals who criticize the cost of governmental projects to make sure they have concrete facts to back their claims before making such negative allegations, especially political leaders.

“If you have a new breed of political quantity surveyors who are not civil engineers but can stand and look at something and say it is too expensive, then there is a problem,” these were the words President Mahama used in describing politicians who are fond of criticizing government projects.

Speaking at a ceremony to break grounds for the Kasoa Interchange Project on Wednesday, he noted that when you see a project like the Kwame Nkrumah interchange or the Kasoa interchange, there are many things that influence the cost of the project and so if you build a regional hospital in one place, it does not mean the cost would be the same as a regional hospital in another place.

“If you want to know the cost of an item you have to examine the item with the components that go into making the item, because you cannot just stand at a distance and look at two items and determine that the cost of the item must be this, by just looking at it from a distance,” he said.

He added that you must know the components that constitute finished items to be able to know the cost of the item, because if you ask a civil engineer to make an estimate of the cost of a project, there are several things he would ask you, all these things go to determine what the cost of a project  will be.