Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has blamed funding constraints for the slow pace of work on the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri railway project. The Minister stated this during his inspection tour of the Port Harcourt portion of the project yesterday.
Amaechi urges the contractor, CECC to ensure that track-laying reaches Enugu in September. The former Rivers State governor also stressed the need to beef up security on the construction site to check kidnapping.
He also said that the contractors should not allow themselves to be distracted by mischievous individuals or groups masquerading as land owners or natives and therefore should not hesitate to call the service of security men when disturbed.
He words: “Our expectation is that they get to Enugu by September in terms of tracklaying. I think we also need to ask them whether they will be able to construct the stations because there are stations that are yet to be approved by the cabinet. We need to go back to the cabinet to ask for those approvals. “For security, I think we need more security here than we currently have so that we don’t have any kidnap cases.”
Amaechi said the company handling the project had not done much work on the project inaugurated in 2021, explaining that the funding challenge was responsible for the low pace of work on the site.
He said: “The project was inaugurated last year but the project is at the level it is because enough funding was not given to them.
Now, they have something that can make them go further from where they are. They have some level of funding and I hope that we secure the loan before they exhaust what we currently have.”
