S/East short-changed over 12 road contracts award

Some stakeholders have complained about the lop-sidedness in the recent award of new road contracts in the country considering the several numbers of abandoned and uncompleted federal roads in the region that are in worst condition. Only last week, the Federal Government approved the award of at the cost of N126billion.

It would be recalled that the Minister of Power, Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola had at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja last week said the projects were spread across Kano, Bauchi, Adamawa, Kwara, Gombe, Enugu, Kaduna and Bauchi States.

Fashola said the contracts award would restore confidence to the nation’s construction industry. Contractors who have been owed for two to three years before the new administration are back in various states where they recalled back their workers and as they are purchasing gravel and cement and other materials, the economy is on its way back.

In the Minster’s submission, ‘’Once we mobilise the contractors, the money is kept in those states. Most of the  workers who drive the trucks, who fix the roads that you see are indigenes of those states and so, they aggregate to the total output from each of those states to the national productivity recover’’.

Meanwhile, the National Assembly has queried the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) over unemployed N10 billion released to it last year.

Chairman of Senate Committee on FERMA, Magnus Abe said the agency has failed totally in 2016 budget performance. On his part, Magahi Aliyu Da’au and member of House Of Representatives wondered why the agency left the money unused despite the numerous road traffic crashes on the roads.

He called for decisive action against the Managing Director of FERMA calling for the removal of all those in charge of the agency regretting that the most recent road crash was along the Kano-Kaduna road recently that claimed the lives of six persons.