{"id":105136,"date":"2025-12-02T20:57:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T20:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=105136"},"modified":"2025-12-02T20:57:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T20:57:28","slug":"clear-road-contractors-debts-before-awarding-new-projects-osei-nyarko-tells-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=105136","title":{"rendered":"Clear road contractors\u2019 debts before awarding new projects \u2013 Osei Nyarko tells gov\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ranking Member on Parliament\u2019s Roads and Transport Committee, Kennedy Osei Nyarko, has urged the government to prioritise the clearance of outstanding debts owed to road contractors before initiating any new road projects.<\/p>\n

Speaking on JoyNews\u2019 Top Story <\/strong>on Tuesday, December 2, he expressed deep concern over the mounting arrears of about GH\u20b540 billion, despite a GH\u20b55.3 billion allocation to the Ministry of Roads and Highways in the 2026 Budget.<\/p>\n

According to him, the government\u2019s current approach of paying contractors \u201clittle by little\u201d, is unsustainable and has driven some contractors to invoke provisions in their contracts that impose hefty penalties for delayed payments\u2014sometimes up to three times the original amount.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis situation is worrying. There must be a clear strategy on how to deal with this,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n

Mr. Osei Nyarko proposed a straightforward solution: \u201cclear all outstanding debts, then strictly adhere to the annual budget allocation for roads.\u201d He insisted that no new contracts or projects should be awarded without secured funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cClear them, then after that we go strictly by our budget. If there is no money, we won\u2019t give any contract or project without funding. That is the only solution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He further advised that if government decides not to take on new road construction commitments due to limited fiscal space, then priority must shift to rigorous road maintenance to protect existing infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to pay critical attention to road maintenance because if government is not going to commit the state to constructing new projects, then the state has to maintain the existing roads,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"ClearRanking Member on Parliament\u2019s Roads and Transport Committee, Kennedy Osei Nyarko, has urged government to prioritise the clearance of outstanding debts owed to road contractors before initiating any new road projects.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4756,1883,117,10,9,8716],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kennedy-osei-nyarko","category-national","category-news","category-politics","category-popular","category-road-contractors"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}