The House of Representatives Committee on Works yesterday said debts owed road contractors by the Federal Government stood at over N300bn.
The committee said the development has resulted in the slow pace of work by the contractors, adding that some have even abandoned their sites as they continue to wait for the release of funds from the government.
Speaking in Abuja, the chairman of the committee, Toby Okechukwu, said funding remained the biggest challenge the road sector would face next year.
Okechukwu called on both the Federal Government and the contractors to review their roles in road projects.
He said, “We are talking about debts on road projects in excess of N300bn. The first challenge will be the funding of road infrastructure. Money owed road contractors should be looked into in terms of what did government owe and how did contractors perform or did not perform?”
According to him, the Federal Government in the 2015 budget, allocated what the lawmaker described as “paltry” N11bn to the road sector. This, he said has made little impact in offsetting the outstanding debts, let alone addressing the funding of new or running projects.
Okechukwu stressed that the fall in crude oil sales has resulted in the government having less money at its disposal.
He observed that the situation called for a “review of the laws guiding road infrastructure” to increase private-sector participation in road projects.
The lawmaker said, “We should take a serious look at the issue of Public Private Partnership. In doing this, it should not be politically-influenced.
“PPP is a business idea that will be profitable to the investors. So, it is not likely that they will allow it to fail.”
Okechukwu stated that to make the situation worse for the road sector, there was no information on the 2016 budget with less than two months to the end of the current year.
He said, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework expected to be at the National Assembly since September had yet to reach the legislature.
“This implies that the operation of the budget as it relates to the road sector will be affected.
“This is badnews for us, looking at how bad our roads are today,” he disclosed.
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