Geo Anointing Construction Limited has once again locked the Galilea M/A Basic School in the Ga South Municipality due to the Ga South Assembly’s failure to settle an outstanding debt for a six-unit classroom block the company constructed.
The first closure occurred in October, following delays in payment. At the time, the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) assured the contractor that the funds would be released within two weeks. However, no payment has been made since.
Reports by Citinews quote the company’s spokesperson, Emmanuel Addo Okai as explaining that repeated attempts to secure the owed funds from GETFund had been unsuccessful, leaving them no choice but to act.
Okai also warned the Ghana Education Service (GES) against forcibly reopening the facility, stating that any such action would result in legal consequences. “We will not hesitate to take court action if the facility is broken into,” he cautioned.
The situation has left the school’s operations disrupted, with stakeholders calling for a swift resolution to the impasse.
“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.”
Okai said the contract was awarded to them in 2017 by the GETFund. They completed the construction work in 2018 and waited to be paid by submitting all relevant and necessary documents, but they are yet to be paid.
“So, in 2019, banks started chasing us for their money because we had secured a facility from them to utilise for this particular project. So, 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,” he further stated.
Source: Citinews