By Ignatius Ushie
The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN, has charged all Federal Controllers of Works on increased knowledge and ownership of responsibilities of what is happening in their respective states of assignment.
The Director of Press and Public Relations Unit, Boade Akinola, in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja, revealed that the Minister made the charge during a one-day virtual Workshop organised for the Federal Controllers of Works and Engineers’ Representatives recently in Abuja.
The workshop was tagged “Know your road and own your network.”
According to Fashola, “Our Controllers of Works are our foot soldiers on ground in all the 36 States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, they are our ambassadors and their roles are so important in our service delivery.”
The objectives of the workshop included sensitization on responsibilities of the Federal Controllers of Works and the Engineers’ Representatives, interaction with one another for better understanding of their roles to enhance service delivery.
Fashola commended the controllers for ownership in the deployment of road signage. “This is the first level of service delivery that we promised. The road signage are so useful to those that travel on our highways,” he said.
He further charged the Controllers to have good knowledge of the network of roads in their respective states, by deploying their personnel to inspect the network frequently so that they could be the first person to report any damaged portion of the road to the headquarters and report back to road users what government was doing to fix the road.
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Fashola said that as we enter the ember months, the Ministry’s focus is in anticipation that there would be an increase in persons, vehicular and cargo movement, so the Ministry has started to plan for road users to have a better travelling experience than last year.
He called on the Federal Controllers of Works to join hands with the headquarters in the actualization of the President’s vision of making road travelling a better experience for Nigerians.
Earlier, in his opening remarks, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, Mr. Ernest Umakhihe said that the Federal Government was more determined in making a huge investment in the nation’s infrastructure development especially in the roads and housing sectors despite the impact of COVID-19 on the economy.
He, therefore, called on the Controllers of Works and Engineers’ Representatives to leverage on the workshop and re-double their efforts in order to contribute to the Next Level Agenda of the President on road infrastructure.
Papers presented at the workshop included: Roles and Responsibility of State Controllers/Presentation on Project Supervision Reporting/Daily Record Forms, Highway Development & Management Initiative, Work Zone Safety on Construction Sites and lastly, Measurements and Revised Bill of Engineering Measurement.
