The Progressive Road Contractors Association has stated that it does not agree with comments by the Works and Housing Minister Samuel Atta Akyea that local contractors are to blame for shoddy works.

At Engineering Council last Wednesday, Atta Akyea noted that: “if you hire Ghanaian engineers, they wouldn’t want to do the work right. They cut corners, they inflate figures.”

“For the engineer, who is outside, it is a legacy, so that your name is permanently written… but for the Ghanaian engineer, it’s not like that. He is trying to look at situations to make good money and leaving us a shoddy job.”

But the chairman of the Progressive Road Contractors Association, Hammond Larbi has said the poor work on the country’s roads is rather due to the role of political contractors, who are pushing professional contractors out of business.

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According to him, after every change of power, new companies suddenly appear claiming to be contractors.

He called for checks at the Registrar-General's department to find out "how many contractors registered this year under the new regime?

Mr Larbi further argued that local contractors are often not paid on time and are sometimes even forced to use their own money to correct some defects in their works.

He, however, indicated that when those defects are not corrected properly, the whole work gets ruined.