(http://fmi.gov.ng/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ferma-293x300.jpg) The Kogi and Kano States' Road Maintenance Agencies have requested the assistance and collaboration of Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) in their quest to develop their technical and human capacities to achieve the objective of effectively maintaining their road networks.
Dr. Abubakar Adama and Engr. Abubakar Jibril, Managing Directors of Kogi State Road Maintenance Agency (KOGROMA) and Kano State Roads Maintenance Agency, respectively made the appeal recently while leading delegations of officials of their agencies on study tours to FERMA's corporate.
The two chief executives said their agencies were still in infancy, having just been created early this year by their respective State Houses of Assembly in line with the resolution of the National Council on Works held in Lagos late last year. In that vein, they said, their agencies look up to FERMA to assist them build up their own technical and human resource capacities, having already established an enviable reputation for effectively maintaining the Federal roads network.
FERMA's Managing Director/CEO, Engr. Gabriel C. Amuchi, who received the visitors, expressed FERMA's happiness at the establishment of the State Road Maintenance Agencies. He said, Nigerian roads will be much better if all tiers of government established road maintenance mechanisms to drive routine and periodic maintenance of their networks. That way, he said, the situation where roads belonging to the Federal Government are serviceable while those belonging to other tiers are in poor condition would be eliminated.
Amuchi further averred that State road maintenance agencies needed to learn from the experiences FERMA garnered over its ten-year history, especially measures and strategies adopted to achieve sustained maintenance of Federal roads. Among such measures are preventive maintenance and road surveillance programme, development of FERMA cold asphalt and establishment of production centers in different parts of the country, as well as effective monitoring and supervision of field operations by senior engineers and management to ensure set specifications are met.
He also called for a concerted effort of all State road maintenance agencies enacted by law to press for the actualization of the 5% fuel user's charge 40 percent of which accrues to FERMA and 60 percent to the State road maintenance agencies for sustainable funding of maintenance of the entire national road network.
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Federal Ministry of Information (FMI) Nigeria