Because the Ga South Assembly has not paid a debt for a six-unit classroom block that Geo Anointing Construction Limited built, the company has locked the Galilea M/A Basic School in the Ga South Municipality once more.
After payment delays, the first closure took place in October. The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) promised the contractor at the time that the money would be disbursed in two weeks. But since then, there has been no payment.
The company’s spokesperson, Emmanuel Addo Okai, told Citi News that after several attempts to collect the money owing from GETFund failed, they were forced to take action.
Additionally, Okai cautioned the Ghana Education Service (GES) against reopening the institution by force, saying that any such move would lead to legal actions.
The situation has left the school’s operations disrupted, with stakeholders calling for a swift resolution to the impasse.
According to Okai, the GETFund gave them the contract in 2017. They finished the construction in 2018 and submitted the required paperwork in order to be paid, but they have not received payment as of yet.
Okai spoke:
“We made efforts, but they kept calling, today, they would ask for this document. We would produce it. The next day, they would ask for another document. We would produce it. We keep speaking to them, and there is no sign of us getting our money.
“So our message is simple. The GES must be cautioned that this property does not belong to them. If they come back to it, it means they’ll be occupying it illegally, and we refer to them as squatters. And so they should take note. If we come and they are back in the classroom, we’re going to need to take legal action against them.”
“In 2019, banks started chasing us for their money because we had secured a facility from them to utilise for this particular project We kept informing them that we had not been paid. So, what the bank did was to elect officers to come and then verify whether the facility was being utilised or not and indeed when they came, the facility was being utilised by the Ghana Education Service
“So, the banks seized two properties of ours, which we had used as collateral since 2019. We have been chasing the government for our money, and the government keeps telling us or reassuring us that we should give them some time and they would pay and up to today, we have not been paid,”
