According to Leadership, the companies announced on Wednesday that they have sacked 65,000 of their over 85,000 workforce, following their inability to meet up with their obligations to them.
The companies blamed their action on the recent recession that has hit the sector following debt of over N600billion which the federal, state and local governments were owing its members.
The president of the body, Solomon Ogunbusola, who spoke with newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday, asked the federal government save the sector from total collapse.
Ogunbusola noted that of the over 135 construction firms who are members of FOCI, none of them has been paid since August 2014, even though some of the jobs for which his members were being
owed, had been completed and handed over to the government.
He lamented also that, in a letter written to President Muhammadu Buhari on September 17, 2015, they were yet to get a response.
Bank loans which some of the companies took to execute projects for which they were being owed, have had interest accrue on them, the president stated further.
Ogunbusola said: “Some of us took loans which we have not been able to pay back and interest is accumulating on the loans daily. This isn’t helping us and that is why we want the government to look into this issue to see how the situation can be salvaged.”
He therefore counseled the federal government to clear the backlog of payment for some of the certified jobs to enable contractors go back to work, urging them to do away with the old practice of frivolous award of contracts without budgetary allocation.
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