A report by the News Agency of Nigeria has credited The Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA), with plans to embark on fixing 36,000km roads with potholes and intervene in the repair of failed roads nationwide as the rainy season sets in.
The statement was made by the acting Managing Director, FERMA, Mr. Godson Amos via an interview with Agency on Sunday in Abuja.
According to him, the intervention was necessitated because of the need to ameliorate the hardship and delays road users face daily.
He was optimistic that the intervention would be acheived within six weeks of the commencement and all potholes and road failure worked on, on federal roads across the country.
He said he had gotten reports across the country of of the deplorable Federal Roads across the country which had caused a lot of inconveniences to road users.
He added that these failures have hampered economic activities due to inability of the people to freely move goods from one place to the other.
“This hinders the free flow of traffic, causing colossal damages to vehicles, wastages of productive man hours and huge discomfort to road users.
“Our of engineers in the Field Offices have already carried out route condition survey of the Federal Roads and heave identified all critical failures like road embankments washout and failed carriageway section for the agency to take action.”
Speaking on how the agency would executive this intervention, Amos said direct labour would be deployed by engaging skilled and unskilled youths in the communities.
He further said that appraisals have been made, including the assessment of works requirement, estimation of resources like men, materials and machines that will be deployed to achieve most cost effective result.
Amos said in order to ensure that maximum results was achieved the agency had designed a good monitoring mechanism for effective and efficient monitoring of all the projects nationwide deploying management team for inspection.
He urged the media to give effective coverage to the activities of the agency and other stakeholders to partner with the agency to ensure that citizens have stress free and enjoyable travel experience on our highways.
The chief executive of FERMA however, said funding was a challenge in the maintenance of the 36,000 kilometres of federal highways all year round.