Contractors awarded road and other infrastructural projects in Lagos who fail to execute to specifications and standards set by the state government will forfeit part payment for such projects.
Specifically, road projects that collapse before one-year retention period allows by the government would not be paid the balance of agreed contract sums.
Temidayo Erinle, special adviser to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, who doubles as Managing Director of Lagos State Public Works Corporation (LSPWC), who confirmed this to BusinessDay, said the caveat was to guarantee the delivery of quality work and ensure effective utilisation scarce resources to provide maximum services to the people.
“Our road projects have one-year retention period. If a road fails before this period, the contractor is expected to go back there and correct it. Usually we don’t pay the full contract sums until the project is certified, so the contract would lose the payment of his balance, said Erinle.
Erinle was responding to question bordering on shoddy jobs by some local contractors. One of such projects is North Avenue, Apapa, executed under the ‘115 roads project’ undertaken by the Governor Ambode-led government in 2016. The road commissioned in September 21, 2016 had failed in less than eight months. It is now listed among the 45 roads to be rehabilitated across the state by the LSPWC after the rains this year.
In several states of the federation, examples of poorly executed projects abound, with some abandoned outright after the payment of mobilisation sums in what lends credence to allegation of corrupt practices.
At the federal level, over 12,000 projects scattered across the country with over N5 trillion are said to have been abandoned by contractors, some them after part payments had been made. The report of the abandoned Projects Audit Commission set up by former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011, had traced some of the projects back to 40 years.
In May this, the Federal Government terminated contracts for six abandoned projects, with the minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Usani Usani, citing “gross lack of technical capacity and lack of competence by the contractors to whom the contracts were awarded.
According to Usani, there was violation of contract award process; right from the cycle of procurement planning to contract award.
“Prominent among other issues of violation were indiscriminate award of contract by initiating and benefiting departments without the leading and guiding role of the procurement department.”
JOSHUA BASSEY
