Akwa Ibom State government has attributed the delay in completing and delivering the N50Billion world bank assisted erosion control project in the state to constant rainfall as well as insincere attitude of some property owners who petitioned state government to world bank over non payment of compensation when knowing fully well that they have been paid.
The state Commissioner for Environment and Solid minerals, Charles Udoh disclosed this while fielding questions from journalists in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital on the delay delivery of the project.
He said besides those two reasons, there are other secondary issues such as activities of vandals that have affected the pace of work adding that they go in the dearth of the night to vandalise already precast drain, thereby impeding the progress of work already done.
According to him, “If you recount almost eight months, last year, work was stalled because of rain, we had a very unusual amount of rainfall and once the rain falls there is hardly any significant thing you , can do on these project sites, especially earth works,because once the soil is moisturized you can’t compact, that is why you see the work hasn’t been done.
“Rain has been a major challenge, because anytime it rains it takes us about three days to recover.
“Another issue is the attitude of people for instance, a gentleman collected compensation fee on his asset and goes behind to petition the state government to world bank that we didn’t pay him, and unfortunately for him he thinks that we are not aware.
“What we do in compensation is that if we are paying you, we will do evaluation, an international standard evaluation with a consultant too, your village head, chairman of the village council, youth leader etc will confirm your ownership of the asset and they will be present before giving you the compensation and we take pictures.
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“So this gentleman goes round saying that we didn’t pay him. Of course, the World bank knows how to settle such matters, for me it is heartbreaking because this gentleman’s house was perpetually under the water and we are coming to help him take him out of his misery, but he is there trying to frustrate us, at least he is not the only one who has done this there are many of them who do these things because of selfish interest.
“We also have issues where in the precast drain, vandals have gone there to vandalise. The sad thing is that when the precast drain is being built, there are protruding rods that form the joinings to make it compact. At the dearth of the night, people will go and cut those rods and when you cut the rods that precast membrane is useless; it’s not going to stand alone.”
The Commissioner said however that despite the hiccups, work has reached almost 95% completion.
He announced that the world bank has granted state government one month window to ensure that it finished the project adding that they are working day and night to ensure they beat the deadline.
“We are just trying to be a bit fast because the world bank granted us one month extension so we are just working day and night to beat the deadline. The World bank window was closed last month, May, so as it stands now all the works need to be done on or before the end of June, even if the work is not completely done but at least before the end of June, water must be able to move from IBB to a the drain comfortably”, he said.
