LOYALISTS are forcing building contractors to pay a new "totally crippling" form of extortion.
Contractors have pulled out of jobs in north and west Belfast because they are being forced to hire unskilled men and pay them extortionate wages.
A contractor who contacted the News Letter said he pulled out of a job in west Belfast last month beca
use he could not have his name and reputation connected to such "inferior workmanship".
He said the latest extortion racket, being carried out by the UDA, was stopping contractors even tendering for jobs in north and west Belfast.
The NI Affairs Committee report into organised crime said that paramilitary involvement was threatening political progress in Northern Ireland.
The IRA and UVF were both accused of extorting five and six-figure sums from businesses.
Committee chairman Sir Patrick Cormack said it was also having a severe impact on the economy.
The contractor said: "For years they have been promising security firms of a sort to look after building sites at night and at the weekend for, let's say, £1,000 a week.
"The money they are making is phenomenal. If you don't pay up, whatever work you do is destroyed. Another way they get at you is to have diggers and other heavy and expensive machinery go missing. Then you have to pay to get it back.
"That, I know, is happening regularly in the Shankill area. One contractor had a wall built one day and the next day the whole thing was gone, every single brick."
The contractor, who does not want to be named, said he doubted whether the paramilitaries cared that their own
areas are going to suffer.
"Their latest racket is back-firing on them, if they care, because there are
going to be very few new houses in their areas," he said.
"The men we are being asked to hire have never done a day's work in their lives. They have not done their time and are not skilled, just handymen.
"It means there is a lot of inferior building going on – and either a contractor gets one of his men to fix it which takes time or it is left inferior.
"The whole hassle has made contractors like me pull out because it is just too much bother.
"I know others who have pulled out in the west and the north."
Police said they were very much aware that extortion was being carried out in north and west Belfast, but that they needed information from the public to progress their enquiries.
The PSNI's confidential extortion helpline number is 028 9092 2267.
