Roads Rehabilitation: Aba Residents Urge Govt To Monitor Firms

A cross section of Aba resi
dents have called on Abia State Government to monitor firms rehabilitating roads in the city, to ensure adherence to the contract specifications.
The respondents said that in spite of government’s interest in the rehabilitation of roads in Aba, it should put a monitoring mechanism in place to ensure that the jobs were done according to specifications.
The residents, in separate, interviews with our correspondent in Aba recently, noted that ineffective supervision and monitoring were the bane of perennial road dilapidation after rehabilitation.
In his comments, Mr Sunny-James Ede, a businessman, said: “I have not seen this type of road rehabilitation before; if you give me a job to do, you should be coming to the site to see if what you asked me to do, is what I am doing.
“When I was in Israel, I worked with a construction company there called Hilcon. They dry out water on any road before they start work but that is not the case with these construction companies in Aba.
“Government should not go to sleep after giving these contracts expecting that the work will go on as planned without monitoring and inspecting the work’’, he said.
A fabrics dealer on Jubilee road, Mr Martin Nwakamma, said that the construction companies should be checked to ensure that they do not continue the destruction of what Late Gov. Sam Mbakwe did.
“If you look at the one they have done, you will see how they destroyed the area that the governor of former Imo State, Chief Sam Onunaka Mbakwe did.
“But when you ask them to reconstruct it to the standard that Mbakwe did the job, they cannot do it and this should not be allowed to continue’’, Nwakamma said.
Mr Prince Uchenna, another trader, said that the companies were not working according to the specification given to them.
“You can see here that when they come today and pour sand and gravel on it, they leave it and go, making it easy for the rain to wash away’’, he said.
Uchenna also observed that the lack of suitable drainage systems in Aba was responsible for the quick failure of rehabilitated roads in the city.
He urged the government to de-silt the blocked drains in the city before rehabilitating the roads, to ensure that they did not fail after one week of its rehabilitation.
“You can see that they have rehabilitated Jubilee and Faulks Road by Omenazu Street almost thrice since January 2013, yet the roads keep washing away,’’ he said.
In his view, Mr Onyekwere Okorie, said that the contractors were working according to the specifications given to them by the government.
“If they were asked to do a better job, they would do it because we have seen local construction companies in Enugu that do quality jobs.
“If you go to these companies, you will see civil engineers. So it is not as if they cannot do it better but what they are doing is what they were asked to do and you cannot question them’’, Okorie said.
He called on government to provide more refuse bins at strategic places in Aba to ensure proper disposal, to reduce the clogging of drains with refuse.
Okorie noted that it was the only way to guarantee easy flow of water and preserve the rehabilitated roads for a long time.
Our correspondent reports that some roads recently rehabilitated in Aba failed before they were two weeks old, with deep pot holes.