OGHENETEJIRI NYERHOVWO
Delta State governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa has been berated over the condition of roads constructed by his administration just as he has been slammed over his alleged wasteful spending of resources accruable to the state.
In a statement by Good Governance Monitors, a socio-political pressure group signed by Chief Kelvin A. Afoke, State Coordinator, the group said that it is disheartening to see roads constructed in Delta state failing after a couple of months.
The group disclosed that the construction of the roads fall below set professional engineering standards and wondered what government engineers who certified the jobs and gave the contractors clean bill of health for payment were doing.
The group noted that in order to cover government’s inadequacy, it ordered contractors handling such failed roads to go back to sight adding that the action of government was self indictment which goes to show that the Senator Ifeanyi Okowa led administration has failed Deltans in road construction.
According to the group, “the issue with the roads is their durability. The entire construction processes of the roads in Delta State are faulty because they are poorly executed as very many of the roads go bad almost immediately the contractors leaves site.”
The group added, “it is shameful for government to ask contractor that left site a couple of months ago to return to fix broken and bad portions of roads just executed, what then did government engineers who gave clean bill of health and certified the roads did? They ought to have known that the jobs were poorly executed or is this another way of deceiving Deltans. We make bold to say that staff of the Ministry of Work beginning from the Commissioner, Permanent Secretary and all connected with such certification be made to explain.”
The group further wondered why states like Rivers would award such contracts to reputable companies for durability, Delta State Government that gets almost the same revenue from Abuja will award such roads construction contract to little known self styled contractors from the villages or politicians with no engineering knowledge, adding, “what then do you expect to see when they complete such work, nothing else but shoddy jobs that are poorly executed
On wasteful spending of resources, the group added, “Delta State belongs to the group of states that receives high monthly allocation from the Federal Allocation Accounts Committee (FAAC) but we do not see great people-oriented projects as we see in Cross River, Rivers and Akwa Ibom States, what is happening?”
