ERA OF SUBSTANDARD ROAD WORKS GONE IN DELTA – Comrade Izeze

Delta State Commissioner for Works (Highways and Urban Roads), Comrade Reuben Izeze, has advised any contractor hoping to be paid for jobs not duly certified by his Ministry’s Engineers, to look elsewhere.

Comrade Izeze, a former member of the State House of Assembly, who dropped the hint on Sunday when he hanged out with Journalists at the NUJ Press Centre in Asaba, said supervision of road projects was no longer business as usual.

He explained that Governor Sheriff Oborevwori was determined to deliver legacy projects that would stand the test of time, emphasizing that road projects executed by the present administration should pass durability test of at least 20 years.

The Works Commissioner said job specifications and quality control were now strictly monitored from start to finish before certificates could be issued for payment.

Comrade Izeze told his hosts that all the Engineers in the Ministry of Works were on the same page on the issue of quality and anyone tempted to go into an unholy alliance with any contractor would be doing so at his own peril.

The former Lawmaker, who criticized so much emphasis on road as the ultimate need of communities, maintained that any community with easily accessible earth roads had no business asking the government for tarred roads, but instead water and electricity, which were of greater socioeconomic value to the people.

On Federal roads, Comrade Izeze said the State Government would continue to intervene in the rehabilitation of such roads whenever it became necessary because Deltans would be better for it.

He, however, stressed that government would not intervene in any Federal road on contract, like the Agbor-Asaba stretch of the Benin-Asaba highway, as the glory of doing so would at the end go to the contractor.

Welcoming the Commissioner to the hangout, the Chairman, Delta State Council of the NUJ, Comrade Churchill Oyowe, said it was an informal setting to parley and party, raise concerns about issues of public interest and take the reactions of guests to such concerns, as they affected their official duties, in a friendly atmosphere.