Africa-Press – Liberia. The Commercial Director of CESAF Liberia Limited, a Liberian owned construction firm, Kpedee M. K. Woiwo, says the lack of local capacity is posing a serious challenge to the construction industry of the country.
“By local capacity, we mean the skills available in the local market. For example, I have been looking for a civil engineer and can’t find one available to work,” Mr. Woiwor said.
At the year-end award ceremony for staffers of the organization held in Paynesville, Woiwor noted that this challenge has constrained not only him but others in the construction business in Liberia to look outside the country for foreign engineers.
Woiwor added that if there are available civil engineers in the country, they woukf be helpful to supervise various construction projects, including CESAF Liberia. Woiwor, meanwhile, has emphasized the need for the government to support these companies.
According to him, unlike CESAF-Liberia, most of these companies have small support growth, stressing that government needs to create the environment by supporting local companies through the provision of funds.
“The normal local Liberian Companies are very small and they don’t have the equipment, they don’t have resources and adequate capital to venture into big contracts,” Woiwor averred.
“I am not saying, they should give them free money, but to make available to them loans with very low-interest rates, so they can be able to grow.”
Moreover, Mr. Woiwor wants the government to create an incentive education to encourage more Liberians to study Civil Engineering courses in and outside Liberia.
Going forward, the CESAF Liberia Commercial Director maintained that despite COVID-19 hurting the country, the company remains committed to helping contribute to infrastructure development in the country.
“We had COVID-19, but we never seize to operate and we are looking forward to holding contracts in the coming years and we have started discussing with some plans and hopeful that these contracts will come online,” he stated.
The Liberian-owned company established by Woiwor has been in existence since 2011, but Woiwor said they hired both Liberians and foreign engineers due to the local engineering capacity gap.
Woiwor disclosed that the company intends to diversify its operation from just the vertical area to the horizontal area. He said: “We have done so many projects at the vertical area since 2011 and the coming year, we want to diversify it to other construction areas.
We want to go horizontal, we mean road work as an objective for the next three years.” Meanwhile, Woiwor said the year-end award ceremony is intended to appreciate workers who have been with the company for many years, especially since its inception. Woiwor then encouraged workers at CESAF Liberia Limited to beef up their strength to support the work of the company and to take it as their own.
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