In distress due to late payment
I AM a regular businessman eking out a decent living by running a small utility works company. I wish to bring to the attention of the new government that my rice bowl is drying up. It has been three months since I last received payment from my clients who say they haven’t been paid by the government yet.
Payments for numerous construction jobs are still pending and I am just one of the many contractors affected. We have no choice but to “wait and watch” while our businesses continue to suffer.
If the government thinks it will be “business as usual” while it pursues its witch hunting and policy restructuring, it is very wrong.
I have been in the utility works business for the last 20 years and I’ve got an established client base. Hence, I would not hesitate to undertake any work without being paid in advance. Recently, however, I had to turn down a request from one of my clients to lay pipe cables simply because I didn’t have the means to do so.
My suppliers who are aware and wary of the issues of struggling contractors are also reducing their stocks and refusing to supply materials on credit. Things have not looked this bad since the 1997 financial crisis!
Up till early this year, things were looking good on our order books. We’d just been engaged for an upcoming big job and were busy for the last two years with multiple projects going on at full swing. But everything was overturned when the new government came in.
Of course, I voted for this fair and righteous government but now it looks like we are expendable while it pursues its efforts to “make things right”. I can’t even sustain my eight ground staff anymore and I believe there are hundreds of small/medium scale contractors in the same predicament.
I’ve learnt bitterly that politicians will be politicians, and would digress from tackling issues involving the day-to-day survival of honest breadwinners like us.
I’d say leave the whistle-blowing or investigations to the police or other enforcement agencies and get on with the task of releasing payments to contractors for completed jobs. That is only fair!