National Cathedral stops work – workers sent away – builders very broke

ALL construction works on the multi-million dollar National Cathedral project has been stopped due to lack of money.

Construction workers have sent home leaving behind the project contractor and his staff, Executive Director of the National Cathedral Project, Dr. Paul Opoku-Mensah has disclosed.

Dr. Opoku-Mensah said the project would resume when an ongoing fund raising campaign yields fruitful results.

The very highly respected Dr. Opoku-Mensah made this known yesterday, Tuesday August 30, when leadership of the Redeemed Christian Church of God visited his office to donate to the Cathedral Project.

The project is still at the foundation stage as at end of August 2022 awaiting funds to be continued to the next phase although Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has told Parliament the Cathedral would be officially commissioned on Wednesday March 6, 2024, upon completion.

In his remarks yesterday, Dr. Opoku-Mensah said his expectations are that the continuation of the project would be heavily funded by the Christian community.

“The money might be big in terms of volume but if indeed we have 21 million Christians and a million can give us ₵100 a month for a year, we can easily complete this in time.

“I refuse to believe that we can’t get a million Ghanaians out of the 21 million Christians to support this. I still have faith in the Ghanaian and I am confident that we will do this,” Dr. Opoku-Mensah noted.

However, until that expression of faith materializes into reality, the construction remains suspended.

The National Cathedral project was proposed by the Akufo-Addo led Government in March 2017 as a physical embodiment of national unity, harmony, and spirituality and in March 2018, the architectural design was unveiled by the President himself.

At the time, President Akufo-Addo said the Cathedral was being built as a fulfillment of a promise he made to God in the run-up to the general elections in 2016.

Already, the construction of the Cathedral has been enveloped in all manner of avoidable controversies including unholy ones that cannot be described as complimentary.

The disagreements have generally been over the source of funding and calls for transparency in exactly how much of the tax payer’s money was being used for the project.