By Daniel Tyokua
The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has identified increase knowledge and synergy among federal controllers of works as a better means of maintaining roads across the country
He stated this during a one-day virtual Workshop organised for the Federal Controllers of Works and Engineers’ Representatives in Abuja, tagged ‘Know your road and own your network’
Fashiola asked the controllers to take responsibilities of what happens in their respective states of assignment.
The minister said, “Our Controllers of Works are our foot soldiers on ground in all the thirty-Six States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, they are our ambassadors and their roles are so important in our service delivery.”
He explained that the objectives of the workshop include sensitization on responsibilities of the federal controllers of works and the engineers’ representatives, interaction with one another for better understanding of their roles to enhance service delivery.
Fashola commended the controllers for ownership in the deployment of road signages, “This is the first level of service delivery that we promised. The road signages are so useful to those that travel on our highways,” he said.
He charged the Controllers to have good knowledge of the network of roads in their respective states, by deploying their personnel to inspect the network frequently so that they could be the first person to report any damaged portion of the road to the headquarters and report back to road users what government was doing to fix the road.
In a statement by the ministry’s Director Press, Boade Akinola said that as we enter the ember months, the Ministry’s focus is in anticipation that there would be an increase in persons, vehicular and cargo movement, so the Ministry has started to plan for road users to have a better travelling experience than last year.
He called on the Federal Controllers of Works to join hands with the headquarters in the actualization of President’s vision of making road travelling a better experience for Nigerians.
In his remarks, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, Ernest Umakhihe said that the Federal Government was more determined in making huge investment in the nation’s infrastructure development especially in the roads and housing sectors despite the impact of global pandemic of Covid-19 on the economy.
He therefore called on the Controllers of Works and Engineers’ Representatives to leverage on the workshop and re-double their efforts in order to contribute to the Next Level Agenda of President on road infrastructure.
Papers presented at the workshop included: Roles and Responsibility of State Controllers/Presentation on Project Supervision Reporting/ Daily Record Forms, Highway Development & Management Initiative, Work Zone Safety on Construction Sites and lastly, Measurements and Revised Bill of Engineering Measurement.
