The federal government on Thursday talked tough on poor project delivery saying that contractors often deviate from quality and standard of terms of contract dampening efforts towards achieving effective project delivery.
Abdulkadir Mua’zu, Permanent secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development at a meeting with the 2019 contractors of the ministry decried the poor quality of project execution experienced in previous projects.
The meting was themed “Promoting standard quality assurance in government’s infrastructure project delivery
He said it was an interactive meeting aimed at sensitizing the esteemed contractors for the 2019 projects on the need to ensure value for money on all infrastructure contracts of the Ministry”.
“You will bear me witness on the poor quality of project executions being experienced in our previous works, goods and consultancy contracts emanating from the use of substandard materials, unqualified personnel, compromised specifications, among others”.
Mua’zu, speaking further stressed that it is disheartening that contractors no longer pay strict adherence to quality and standard of project delivery, terms and conditions of contracts, timely submission of all the necessary and required documents according to the contracts specifications and employment of the services of qualified and experienced personnel for proper contract execution.
“We see that the President is committed to funding the sector because as we all know the sector is critical to our economic diversification agenda, job creation as well as lifting our people out of poverty”.
“Most rural projects are executed very poorly, and we want to change this narrative. So we are saying no contractor should be awarded contract if the government cannot pay”.
Daniel Udo, Director, department of rural development in his remark said that the ministry will continually promote and educate stakeholders and contractors on the need to adopt the network processes in project delivery.
” This meeting will among other things promote strict adherence to quality and standard of project delivery, projects supervision and monitoring”.
” We have recorded series of poor deliveries in the past years as contractors compromise on terms of contract, engagement of unqualified contractors among others”.
He implored the contractors to carry out each project with high sense of purpose and responsibility in order to provide the rural communities with the required infrastructure facilities to improve their livelihood.
Cynthia Egboboh, Abuja
