Roads Minister urges third-party consultants to ensure quality work

The Minister of Roads and Highways, Kwame Governs Agbodza, has asked third-party consultants working on behalf of the Ghana Highways Authority (GHA) not to connive with contractors to shortchange the nation with poor-quality projects.

He consequently urged them to show their independence as professionals in any of the Big Push road projects they were supervising across the country.

Speaking in an engagement with consultants and contractors working on the three bypasses along the Accra-Kumasi highway projects last Monday, Mr Agbodza said the current practice where such consultants often “teamed up or sided with” contractors did not augur well for quality assurance in road projects.

Third-party consultants are independent engineering or management firms engaged by the GHA to supervise, inspect and monitor the work of the contractors to ensure quality assurance and quality control by auditing, reviewing designs and monitoring site operations.

The minister explained that being independent was an indispensable guarantee for the uncompromised execution of expensive road projects funded with the taxpayers’ money.

“We are not against the contractors, but you should be able to stand up because contractors are also businessmen,” Mr Agbodza stated.

Separate agreements  

The minister said the government had decided that from the beginning of this year, all road contracts awarded must ensure that agreements for consultancy and contractors were separate.

That, he said, would see to consultants being paid differently from the contractors’ certificates.

“So when the contractor is raising a certificate for 20 per cent of the work done, which the consultant, in any case, is the one helping the contractor to do so, there must be a corresponding certificate of 20 per cent of work done by the consultant coming together to my office at the same time.

“So when we are paying, we know that we are not going to pay the consultant and leave the contractor or pay the contractor and leave the consultant,” he said.

Such a move, Mr Agbodza explained, would give some level of independence to the consultant to be able to do what “we ask them to do”.