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Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa has scored his administration high in the area of road construction saying despite the recession, a lot has been achieved.
Speaking yesterday (30/05/17) at his quarterly press briefing in Asaba, Governor Okowa assured Deltans that his administration would continue to do its best to deliver on its electoral promise of prosperity for all Deltans.
According to him, “we have continued to do a lot in road development, while we are continuing with some of the roads that were started by the previous administration, some new roads have been awarded and some old roads have been rehabilitated because they have been in very bad shape and as at the last count, we have thus far, as at the last two years, awarded 98 roads and of the 98 roads, 20 of them have been commissioned and from the information available, about 25 of the roads will be commissioned in the course of this second year anniversary.”
“We still have about 53 roads that are ongoing at various stages, some at completion and we are carrying out inspections in the course of town hall meetings we are having as part of activities to mark our second year anniversary in office,” he added.
He emphasised, “as a state, we will continue to count on God to lead us through the difficult times in the state; while recognizing the support of the media, I must use this opportunity to thank all Deltans for the support they have been giving this administration in the last two years; we have gone through very challenging times because the people who have worked with us have been patient with us, they have been offering their suggestions, and I believe that we have continued to move ahead; we may not be as fast as we want to be because of the very obvious situations which is the economic recession in the country, but, we have continued to do what we have to do to deliver on our electoral promises.”
“We came in as a government at a point in time when the oil prices have gone low, unfortunately a few months after we ran into some challenging disturbances where we had in the oil producing areas, a lot of our pipelines were being blown particularly the Forcados Export line and till date, even when work is ongoing, we are still awaiting the completion of the repairs of the line and as at today, a lot of our oil is being shut in and we are not having the full benefits of the oil production in the state,” Governor Okowa stated, noting, “that obviously affected our finances as a state but, by God’s grace we have continued to stabilize the economy of the state and we hope that in the next few months, we will have an improvement in our economy as soon as the line gets repaired.”
Governor Okowa at the well-attended press briefing attended by his Deputy, Barr. Kingsley Otuaro and top government functionaries, also, spoke on the issue of wealth creation saying, “we did promise our people that we will try to create wealth for them which is encapsulated in our prosperity for all agenda because, we are a government that believes that despite the fact that there is the need to engage people in the civil service, but when the civil service is already outstretched, we cannot continue to employ people otherwise we will run into a very big mess in terms of being able to manage the current expenditure of the state but, as an alternative, we have tried to continue to engage our people with skills through training of our youths not only in agriculture but, in other areas that will enable them fend for themselves.”
“We have stayed on course in this last two years through our empowerment programmes such as YAGEP and STEP, in the first year about 1,300 people were trained and in the second year about 3,000 have been engaged and all these people have already been fully trained and a lot of them have received their starter packs but one good thing is that beyond the training, they have monitoring and mentoring programs being carried out by a specialized unit to help the youths towards ensuring their success,” he asserted.