The Federal Government says more than 17,500 road construction
workers are to be re-engaged as contractors return to project sites
across the country.
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr
Babatunde Fashola, made this known when he featured on the News Agency
of Nigeria (NAN) Forum on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said that the
contractors had declared their readiness to re-engage workers, who were
laid off due to the huge debt owed by the Federal Government in the past
three years.
“We are trying to ensure that everybody (contractors
and workers) go back as quickly as possible to have the most effective
impact.
“Just by speaking to 20 of our road contractors yesterday
on the number of people they have laid off who they can move back to
work.
“The return that I got was over 17,500 people that they would re-engage.
“So,
that is the first step. We have over 200 road projects, so, that is
just 20 contractors and we are going to be meeting with more.
Now, that’s change. People who lost their work are coming back to work. That’s what this budget brings.
“Capital expenditure for the ministry is about N353 (billion). That’s a lot different from what we had in 2015.’’
Fashola
criticised the failure of the previous governments to settle debts owed
contractors, a situation, which he said, had created enormous
challenges even in the face of dwindling oil revenue.
He, however,
stressed that the government would not allow current challenges to
distract it from doing its best possible to improve the well-being of
the people.
f contractors have not been paid for three years when oil was selling
for a lot more, the budget is bigger now but the responsibility is just
enormous because the oil resources have reduced.
“So, this is what we should have done three years ago when we had income at close to 100 dollars per barrel.
We
are going to run as hard as we can. And everything little thing that we
do, we hope would improve the quality of peoples’ lives.
According to him, the biggest impact of the budget so far is the restoration of jobs, beginning with the construction sector.
“Taking
one simple step means that we can take about 17,500 and more people to
work. That’s more important to me than how much debt was owed.
“Those
people are heads of families. They are Nigerians who can get up again,
have their dignity restored and go back to work; that’s how you rebuild
an economy.’’
The minister, who expressed displeasure over the
delay in the passage of the 2016 budget, said that the contractors had
pledged to cooperate with the government to complete the projects as
soon as possible.
He said to that end, government had appealed to
the construction companies to increase the pace of work on site in order
to regain lost time.
He added that although the ministry did not get all the funds it had propose.
No comments:
Post a Comment