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Government has taken a major decision to stop paying monies to contractors working on the Affordable Housing project.

This was revealed by the Minister for Works and Housing, Samuel Atta-Akyea who explained that they will rather supply them with the materials to execute the project.

The government arrived at this decision following what he said was the misapplication of the fund by the contractors.

“One way that we’ve discovered as a reason why properties that contractors are putting up delay is that the monies are not seriously applied to the task, and therefore if we are supposed to complete all the houses, we need to buy the materials. And then we have the bills of quantities, the Engineers will say that for this particular string of uncompleted houses, we’ll need so much of cement.

“…chances are that most of these contractors will use the monies for other purposes apart from what is needed for. That is why we’ve taken this decision strongly that we will not put monies in anybody’s hands. Nobody is going to use government monies to look after children schooling abroad or whatever it is. But if it is iron rods, we buy iron rods; you cannot eat iron rods. It has to be applied to the project. And if we go this way, we’ll be able to finish all the uncompleted houses in good time. All that the contractor is entitled to is the cost of labour and their profit margin as defined by the contract,” he spoke to the media after meeting the Public Accounts Committee.