- Agbi Appeals To Deltans
BY PATRICK MGBODO/RITA OYIBOKA
THE Delta State Government has called on all Deltans to play an active role in monitoring contractors to ensure they do not compromise Governor Sheriff Oborevwori’s commitment to delivering quality projects across the state.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Project Monitoring/Audit, Engr Goodnews Agbi, appealed in a chat with The Pointer, yesterday, in Asaba, the state capital.
According to Engr. Agbi, ‘’Help the MORE Agenda of Governor Sheriff Oborevwori. We are all stakeholders, we should all be involved. If a job is wrongly being done in your locality, come and report to us if the contractor does not listen to you.
‘’It happened somewhere in Ndokwa East local government area where the youths organized themselves in protesting against a shabby job. They reported to us and when we got there, we discovered that the contractor was doing the wrong thing and we corrected the contractor.
‘’This MORE agenda is succeeding but we can help to make it succeed more if we are all involved. The governor has tried to make every community happy. It is now for us to play our parts’’, Engr. Agbi said.
He stressed that his office has remained meticulous in the monitoring of all projects by the state government, adding that the contractors were beginning to fall in line by executing high-quality jobs as envisioned by Governor Oborevwori. ‘’We do regular monitoring. We have people in the field and once we are called that a bad job is ongoing anywhere, we go there within 24 hours. We meet the contractor and ensure that the right thing is done.
‘’If we do not monitor these contractors regularly, they would want to cut corners. Contractors are naturally not patriotic. Their main drive is to make a profit, they are not patriotic like the indigenes who want better lives in our communities. This is why we try to cover these loopholes’’, Engr. Agbi said.
The Special Adviser charged contractors to utilize their mobilization funds at the site rather than spending much money on their personal needs and then complain later, adding ‘’if you have a job of N100m, for instance, and you are given N40m, that should be enough to take the project to a certain milestone.
‘’Unfortunately, some of the contractors do not do so and that is why our job also entails auditing. We audit to see if what the contractor is asking for is commensurate to what is on the ground and in most of the cases, we are disappointed’’, he said.
