FERMA to fix flooded roads before new year

FOLLOWING President Goodluck Jonathan’s directive to the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) to patch up roads in the country before the end of the year, the agency has assured that it would give priority on highways affected by the recent floods.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive of the agency, Gabriel Amuchi revealed recently while inspecting preventive maintenance work going on along the Abuja-Kaduna road.
He said, “The truth is that we are dealing with about 35,000 kilometers of road and it is difficult to have this equipment per kilometer. Because we have just about 42 of those units, we are still buying the light maintenance equipment that we need for the work. It is a continuous process that we intend to succeed”.
He said “we have experienced a lot of flooding this year, which is a natural phenomenon, but the Presidency have intervened and has directed our parent Ministry and the Agency to quickly go back to all those areas affected and see what measures we can take to reinstate them and make the roads motorable during this period”.
“The dry season is the best time to do our intervention, because most of the time we do preventive and emergency work during the rainy season. But you cannot do any permanent repairs because the materials are wet. So this is the best time and we are back in full force on all the affected routes,” he stated.
He said the maintenance of roads was an interminable process that was not restricted to Nigeria. And the plan to ensure safety on the roads during the yuletide season as instructed would be carried out though inconclusively, but the dry season, which is considered the best period to construct roads would be adequately utilised.
He added: “If a road has failed badly, gotten totally collapsed and requires full reconstruction, such jobs are being handled by our parent ministry. What we are doing now is that we are jointly recovering roads that are not receiving contract attention by FERMA maintenance programme.
“And ensure that the roads are in good stead and not allowed to deteriorate completely. Because in Nigeria we have several roads built so several years ago and we didn’t have this sustainable recovery strategy and these roads became old, weak and collapsed. FERMA have recovered most of these roads” he stated.

Amuchi said the partnership with the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Program (SURE-P) will ensure that the more than 10,000 youths engaged would be trained to work on the road infrastructure and be appropriately skilled to be self engaged in the road infrastructure subsector.