‘Local contractors need government assistance’

Daily Graphic, Pg 37. Wed. May 27/09

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

THE Vice-President of the Association of Road Contractors (ASROC), Mr Joseph Ebo Hewton, has called on the government to help build the capacities of local contractors so that they can win local and international contracts.
According to him, international companies were often favoured over local ones because the former had more capacity and equipment to win both national and international contracts.
Mr Hewton made the call in an interview with the Daily Graphic at a day’s workshop on capacity building and entrepreneurial skills for women in construction in Accra.
The workshop, which was aimed at building the capacities of women contractors on managerial skills, attracted about 60 participants drawn from all the regions in the country.
According to Mr Hewton, many local contractors did not have the capacity to bid for contracts and, therefore, the government’s intervention in terms of providing both financial and logistical support would help them to compete with foreign contractors.
He also called on the government to revisit a programme which was introduced in the 1990s with the aim of building the capacities of contractors to win international contracts.
He said the programme, which for some years now had been halted, enabled a local contractor, Eagle Star Construction Limited, to win contracts outside the country.
Mr Hewton further appealed to the government to make prompt payments to contractors, saying delays in payment were killing the construction industry.
The Executive Secretary of ASROC, Mr Kwaku A. Nuamah, who took the participants through various topics, said it had become necessary to build the capacities of members of the association to make them more dynamic and result- oriented.
According to him, most road contractors in the country operated within as micro, medium and small-scale enterprises which made them vulnerable because they were unable to work to repay the loans they had contracted, a situation which he said had negative repercussions on themselves, their employees, families and the nation at large.
He said the workshop would enable the participants to be able to identify external and internal factors that could impact negatively on their operations.
He took participants through topics such as processes for preparing business plans, stages of corporate development, analysis of environmental factors that affect businesses and analysis of external and internal factors that can affect businesses.
The Executive Secretary of the Greater Accra branch of ASROC, Mr Kwaku Biney, said the workshop was part of efforts at building the image of the association in the country.
He said similar workshops would be organised for all members across the country.