Contractors task FG on outstanding debts

LOCAL contractors have urged the Federal Government to to pay them  their outstanding debts running into several billions of naira. 

 Speaking under the aegis of Local Contractors Association of Nigeria, (LOCAN),  they contended that the development had impeded their operations and led to retrenchment in a bid to stay afloat.

 The affected contractors, mainly peopled by suppliers, consultants, maintenance and small construction workers, decried the untold hardship they currently go through in the face of dwindling oil receipts occasioned by the free fall of crude at the international market which had made prostrate government’s revenue purse.

Describing the situation as ‘alarming and dangerous’, the association in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja said something must be done urgently by government to salvage things as a bulk of them face property forfeiture following inability to either service or pay up the loans taken from banks and other financial institutions.

 The release, signed by Mazi Chukwu Okeke, specifically called on President Jonathan to wade into the matter by directing the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to substantially settle their payments.

 According to the contractors, “notwithstanding tumbling oil prices, it is imperative that Mr. President looks in our direction and cause the Minister of Finance to pay substantial part of outstanding obligations to local contractors.

“It might interest you to know Sir, albeit sadly, that most of our members are faced with bankruptcy while others have had their property taken over by banks for failing to service loans took for execution of government’s projects. This is aside many families destroyed because of untold economic hardship owing to having expended their resources on contracts execution.

“If government had succeeded in the past to settle foreign debts, then it is not too much for debts owed local contractors to be settled,” Okeke stated.