THE Federal Government has revealed that despite the Coronavirus threat, it will not abandon the ongoing work on the Port Harcourt-Enugu Road.
Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola made this remark on Thursday in Port Harcourt, said construction workers, would only leave the site on the advice of health experts.
Fashola attributed the slow pace of work on the 42km Port-Harcourt-Enugu Road to inadequate funds, difficult terrain, compensation to property owners to accommodate expansion from four to eight lanes and the determination to deliver a quality job.
The minister, who inspected the Oyigbo, Eleme area of the road, said, “There are always trade-offs when human survival is challenged. Development and survival sometimes cannot go together. The trade-off is to choose survival first. And those are the choices our government and the President are making.
“You have seen the cut in fuel price, certain expedition cuts by the Minister of Finance. The contractor is on site. As long as construction is able to go on, under advice by the scientists and health experts, people will continue to work because this is where some earn their daily living.
“We want to keep that going. So, there’s no cause to panic. We will prioritise our spending and investment to ensure that the most vulnerable people who work daily are able to continue their regular existence.
“We are limited by the resources we have and we think that as the world gets better understanding and control of the pandemic and we turn it around things would move round.”
Earlier, the Controller of Works, Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, Rivers State, Johnson Fadire, said the Port-Harcourt-Enugu Road constructed in the 70s without drains had collapsed over the years.
