The Minister of Works, Engineer David Umahi, has issued a deadline of December for the completion of the bridge at the 2nd carriage way, of the East-West Road project and the flyovers contained in the project at no later than April, 2026.
The Minister made this known during a project inspection in Port Harcourt where he commended the work quality of the inherited 15KM by 2 second carriage way under construction,as he ordered for the immediate commencement of all flyovers on the project.
He said: “Let me first commend the quality of the work that RCC is doing. Let me also say that this is one of the NNPC projects that we inherited but in the priority lists of all NNPC project this comes as number one but I want to assure the contractor that we are the one holding the president because he has directed that none of these projects should stop and I’m very sure that within this week we will be making our submissions to MR president so none of your certificates will suffer underpayment.
“When we came on board, we decided to take the 2nd carriage way and reviewed it because the 156billion was not adequate to do the 2 carriage way, three flyovers and the two bridges so we had to review it and came to the conclusion that we will achieve the 2nd carriage way, this little bridge, and a certain percentage of one of the flyovers”
The Minister further explained that the project which was awarded in 2018 was divided into two phases with The first phase costed at 156billion and the second phase may come to between 79 and 80billion which will now arrive at almost 8billion per kilometer.
Umahi however lamented on the poor maintainace of the road by the poeple who park heavy Trucks on the bridges and also convert the roads to training grounds as he expressed his plans to install CCTV cameras, Solar lights and other elements of a coastal highway. He urged stakeholders in the community to give land to build a place allocated to parking static loads.
The federal controller of works, Rivers state, Engr. Tarilade Ewerema,who spoke on the possibility of meeting up with the ministers deadline said it was feasible as the pace of work was commendable inspite of the incessant rainfall that reduces the work progress. She further assured that the works were up to standard.
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