Civil works on the Ekwulobia flyover, first of its kind in the entire Anambra South Senatorial District, will be completed in December.
Mr Ifeanyi Okoma, Commissioner for Works in Anambra said this after defending budget allocation to his office at the State House of Assembly in Awka on Thursday.
Okoma said budget implementation level in the ministry of works was at about 45 percent but expressed confidence that it would reach 85 percent before the end of the year.
“I am assuring you that in the next few days, we would have finished the asphalting of the project, so practically, we would have finished it by the second week of December. What would be left is the road furniture,” he said
Okoma said the budget size for the ministry was about N269 and that work was going on 528 kilometres of roads out of which 316 kilometres were already asphalted since the life of the Gov. Chukwuma Soludo administration.
The Commissioner said inflation was a major challenge to budget execution as cost of construction materials and other inputs such as diesel had had significantly negative effect on the initial projections.
According to him, Anambra budget this year of about N609 billion is not more than $300 million while our past budgets which were much lesser used to be average of $1 billion.
“We have a construction season which started after rains stopped a few months ago, at that time we were at 45 per cent implementation but we hope that by the end of the year it will be at 85 percent because all our contractors are back on site.
“Ekwulobia flyover is not our only signature project, we have the Solution City, the Anambra Government House sitting on 28.9 hectares, Arroma flyover, the upcoming 10-storey hotel,” he said
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that some of the projects under the Ministry of Works are the completion of ongoing road projects and construction of new ones estimated at N200 billion, development of Awka, Onitsha and Industrial City at N32 billion and development of a 4-star hotel at N15 billion.
Others are development of new market at N10 billion, fitting/equipping of the new government houses, amphitheatre, banquet hall, governor’s lodge, security houses at N5 billion and completion of Solution Innovative District Building at N3 billion.(NAN).
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