The Delta State government has said the state engages only competent contractors in handling road projects across the State.
Mr. Charles Aniagwu, Commissioner for Works, Rural and Riverine, disclosed this to on Thursday August 22, 2024, when members of Indigenous Correspondents’ Chapel (ICC), Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Delta State Council paid him a courtesy visit in his office in Asaba, the State capital.
He revealed that a whole lot of effort is put in by the ministry to engage competent contractors following the various factors that are associated in road construction.
According to him, “I can tell you that a whole lot of effort is usually being put in, in the ministry to engage very competent contractors .
“Road construction is not entirely like other things that you do that you can easily tell what will come out. There are a whole lot of factors that comes in.
“And that is why we have what is called retention; you construct a road, if that road if ten naira and we are able to pay possibly up to nine naira and we hold back one naira for a period of one year, at some instances up to two years.
“We hold that money so that if anything happens that, that your job have issues, you can now still go back and do it without any other additional cost to government and then, thereafter when we certify that the road is able to stand the test of time, then you are now allow to have access through a certificate that your money that is retained. Sometimes it depends on the volume of work, it runs into some hundreds of millions.
“And so, it is proper engineering practice that it is possible that for some obvious reason that in the cause of work one or two things may happen.
“No matter how much effort you put in, along the line even a competent contractor could construct a road where along the line one thing happens that it generate a pothole or a little crater because the contractor is not the ancestral owner where the road is constructed.
“There could be some elements, maybe somewhere around there before was a soak-away 60 years ago but overtime, it has been covered by normal soil type and even when you are doing excavation to remove unsuitable materials, you do not know that beneath what you thought you have gotten to the suitable material”, explaining that there might be something that the contractor didn’t see.
“And you start contracting and you do the road and you compact and the road is fine. Now, continuous pressure by vehicles that are coming and are carrying loads as much as 45 tonnage weight increased auxils on that road like the Dangote kind of truck.
“By the time they continue to pound the road, something may happen in that particular spot that you didn’t see, that does not mean that we ate dealing with contractors that are not competent”, stressing that roads are of different categories.
“If we continue to insist that we must bring foreign contractors coming from abroad, that contractor was not born a contractor. It is in the cause of time that he grew, like they said, experience is the best teacher.
“Overtime, as the contractors that we have engaged, people that you call indigenous contractors, they have shown that they could also improve in their abilities. The contractors that we have, to a very large extence are doing well.
“Some of them now are doing very beautiful bridges and if you see some of the things they are doing, you will not even believe that it is coming from some of these our indigenous contractors but that is not to say that we will not take into cognizance some of these issues that you have raised for us to further raise the bar”.
On the issues of contractors abandoning projects, he said: “that is not entirely true. There are certain things our people need to understand. If you are constructing a road awarded to you for instance in March, which most of the time is dry season where you have lesser rain.
“And you continue, you have been able to remove unsuitable materials, build your concrete works (the drains and possibly the covets), and by the time you get into June, when you are supposed to start your earth work, maybe bringing in Laterite and then, the rain comes in some immeasurable proportion , even we as a ministry, will ask you to march brake.
“Because if you proceed because you want to gain speed, you are not going to be able to have the opportunity to be able to compact the Laterite that you are going to pour and spread across that corridor because you do know that once you pour Laterite and you have that kind if water on top of it, as you are compacting it, it is going to attach to the roller and you cannot achieve what you want to achieve
“You cannot even wake up and say let me go and apply crushed stones on top of it. And you cannot all of a sudden change from Laterite in a dry land to shape sand which you can possibly use to work in raining season. The cost of the shape sand is not the same thing as the Laterite”, insisting that Laterite must be applied as at when due.
He said such a situation between the raining season and another dry season, it would not be correct for people to say the contractor has abandoned such a project.
He equally pointed out that a contractor may not be seen at a site due to escalation in price or preparation of certificates awaiting government payment, calling on Deltans to exercise patient with the government and contractors handling road projects across the State particularly with the ongoing work on Ododegho road as the project was awaiting review.
He pointed out that government may also be engaged in scale of preference which is not “total adjudication”, as government would not take everything at one moment.
“The contractor may just hold on to either source money from the bank or for government to process certificates and pay so that he can also return”, he added .
Earlier, Chairman of the Chapel, Kenneth Orusi, appreciated the Commissioner and his management team for approving the courtesy.
He pointed out the need for projects to be constantly given to more competent and capable contractors in order for executed projects to stand the test of time.
