Minister of Work, Dave Umahi, said the administration of President Bola Tinubu is ready to provide funds for the construction of quality roads in the country.
The minister gave the assurance during the inspection of ongoing federal road projects in Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states.
The minister, who preferred concrete pavement to asphalt, told some of the contractors on sites that time has come for them to consider the use of concrete technology for roads in Nigeria.
He was impressed with the quality of work done on Apapa-Owronshoki-Ojota road project, a concrete pavement road handled by the Dangote Group under the Federal Government Tax credit initiative.
Talking to some of the contractors, the minister said: “There is a need to use concrete technology. It’s going to make our roads last for a minimum of 50 years.”
The minister said contractors have complained over the high cost of cement in the country and made claims that importing the product would be cheaper.
His words: “I’m going to be running figures with them (cement manufacturers) to check the cost of cement if we import it and the cost they are giving us here.
“A lot of contractors have complained that it is cheaper to import, but we are not allowed to import cement because we have to help the cement industries, but they also have to be reasonable with us if we are going to be patronising them.”
“We are looking at all these things. How do we cut down costs? Because the primary issue is also the cost of construction. We are looking at the figures but it looks like a lot of contractors are not willing, but I will make them to make the change – we are all engineers,” he said.
The minister said the Federal Government is ready to prioritise maintenance of all federal roads across the country.
In Lagos recently, the minister said that the Federal Government would carry out resurfacing of the Third Mainland Bridge. The minister inspected the three bridges that linked the Mainland and Island in Lagos, and disclosed that the government is more concerned about happenings underneath the bridge.
According to him, the ministry has been liasing with the contractor handling the project and would mobilise as soon as the ministry receive the necessary details of the ongoing investigation.
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