Secretary of the Board of Trustees for the National Cathedral Project, Reverend Kusi Boateng, says he’s hopeful the National Cathedral is going to be completed in three years.
Although actual construction is yet to begin on the site, the Reverend stated that the Covid-19 pandemic was to be blamed for the nine-month delay, as the construction firm that won the bid to construct the Cathedral could not travel due to the restrictions.
However, following the easing of travel restrictions, he indicated that they are currently in town and construction will begin soon.
Speaking on JoyNews’ The Pulse, Wednesday, he said: “This construction, if I’m to tell you how it is, it’s not any regular construction that anybody can just do. One of the biggest construction firms in Italy that did the grand mosque of Abu Dhabi is the Rivani Construction Company. It’s the lead construction company that built a JV with Barbisotti and Sons.
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“Obviously with the Covid, it was impossible for the winners as the contractors to have flown in to come and start any kind of a job. So with the Covid, obviously things were happening but there was no way things could have begun because the people that won the bid could not come to Ghana to work. So it was the Covid that slowed us down, but we’ve crossed that boundary and we have them in town, work has started and things are moving.”
He also clarified that the apparent slow pace of the construction of the National Cathedral was due to the restrictions the Covid-19 pandemic had presented and not on financial challenges as some had purported.
Reverend Boateng stated that now that the challenge has been taken care of with the arrival of the Rivani contractors, construction will begin expediently, projecting that the Cathedral would be completed in three years.
“The main issue why the project had not started was not money because we have people that have supported us, we have people that are still supporting us and the government is also in the process of supporting us, so money is not the issue.
“But Covid and the challenges of appointing the contractor and all those things were the things that delayed us but now we’re really on course. The cathedral will be built.
“Basically it was three and a half years to four years but now we’re going to do it in a record three years. If not less,” he said.