Akinyemi Ojo, an engineer with the Federal Government’s Agency, Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), Ebonyi State Field Office, has warned residents of the State against disposing of waste on drainages and waterways which can cause flood, destroy the roads and property as well as claiming lives.
This is even as FERMA has rehabilitated more portions of the failed Abakaliki/Enugu highway.
Akinyemi, who supervised rehabilitation of some failed portions of Abakaliki/Enugu Highway, noted that the failed portion had become a death trap for motorists, blaming the road failures on human activities, just as he urged people to avoid disposing of waste on drainages and waterways.
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“We discovered that some concrete roads failed and from investigation, we discovered that it was from the foundation. So, after cutting and scooping out, we confirmed that that happened because the water was rushing out from under the ground which shows that the ground level water is up and they didn’t take care of that before the construction. That was what caused the failure and that is what we are addressing and correcting.
“There is a washout at km 8.700 along this Abakaliki/Enugu road, that one has been corrected, we have fixed it and it is motorable. When that one happened, our attention was called by the Civil Defense and DSS to that location which they wrote to our agency and immediate action was taken and we can rectify that.
“There is another one in that same location, the approach of the bridge. Some months back, it was a death trap for motorists but to the glory of God, we have been able to arrest that, we have fixed it properly and it is working. Another bridge is accident-prone. Our attention too was called to it by the DSS at the front of FETHA 2 in Abakaliki here and we have corrected that. We have opened it for traffic.
“Some of the failures is as a result of human activities. At the Federal Teaching Hospital (FETHA)where we worked, people were pouring specks of dirt on one side of the road, people were pouring waste inside the drain and they were not clearing things. Once the drain is seated up it will cause the flood to take place on the carriageways and once there is too much water on the carriageways, asphalt will fail.
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“Motorists should take caution and people of the community too, the road users should take caution and manage the road well. It is not everything that the government will do for us. We have our little part to play by making sure that we are not pouring specks of dirt inside the drain”, he said.
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