Lawmakers at the Lagos State House of Assembly have cautioned Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to direct the Commissioner for Finance to ensure that contractors are not paid mobilization fee unless Right of Way is delivered and the contractor is ready to work.
This came about after a motion moved by the Chairman of the House Committee on Works and Infrastructure, Hon. Abiodun Tobun at plenary on Thursday, November 5, 2020, was adopted as a resolution of the House.
The House then called on the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, through the office of the Special Adviser on Works, to prepare regulations outlining standards operation
procedures for road contract administration in the state and forward the same to the House in line with Section 1 of the regulations approval law.
“The House recognized the humongous amount of money that the state spends yearly on road repairs and reconstruction, to facilitate seamless transportation system and boost economic activities of the people of Lagos State and observed with dismay the prevalence of failure of newly constructed and rehabilitated roads in the State.
“It further observes with worry the abandonment of many road projects begging for attention to be commenced or completed; and
“Realizes that the issue of substandard road construction and rehabilitation is to be blamed on the absence of approved regulations specifying standard operating procedures required in road project administration, and that lack of delivery of right of way before payment of mobilization fee is responsible for many cases of abandoned projects in the State,” the motion read.
The prime mover of the motion, Hon Tobin told his colleagues that these observations were noticed during the oversight functions of his committee.
In his contribution, Hon. Lukmon Olumoh, representing Ajeromi 1 said that the scarce resources of the state must be well managed.
According to him, “we have seen so many projects abandoned and we need to look at those projects and see how much we have with the contractors. We should also look at better ways to get things done.”
Gbolahan Yishawu, representing Eti-Osa constituency 02, said that the development is detrimental to the budgeting process as the contractors often come back for variations because having held money for the project more than a year costs of items go up and that a review was needed.
He further said that funds get tied down in the budget and that they could not be used for any other project aside from what it was initially appropriated for. This, he said, leads to abandonment of projects.
David Setonji, from Badagry 2, noted that the ministries involved are working at cross purposes and that the Ministry of Physical Planning is not cooperating, as it regards giving right of way for the execution of projects.