Ogunlewe seeks engagement of public workers in projects’ execution

Tue, Aug 6, 2019
By publisher
2 MIN READ

Politics

A former Minister of Works, Sen. Adeseye Ogunlewe on Tuesday called for the active engagement of public workers in the design and execution of major projects across the country.

Ogunlewe made the call while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

He said the current practice where contracts for projects were mainly awarded to private construction firms by governments would not augur well for the country’s development.

Ogunlewe said engineers in the public service had the capacity to drive infrastructure development, urging government at all levels to utilise their expertise actively.

‘’The civil service is very central to the infrastructural development of the country. We employ engineers into the civil service; they went to the best schools and we pay them monthly.

‘’But we don’t involve them in the construction of infrastructure; rather we award contracts to private firms, making our experts in the civil service almost idle.

‘’We need to change the way we do our things .Our engineers in the public service have the capacity to build roads, bridges and whatever than those in the private companies are doing.

‘’We only need to encourage, empower them and actively engage them in projects We will save costs by doing so and projects will be more speedily executed,’’ he said.

Ogunlewe, also a former Managing Director of Lagos State Public Works Corporation said countries like China had used its civil service to catalyse infrastructure development, saying that same could be done in Nigeria.

He noted that engineers in the Nigerian Army had executed some ambitious projects in the country, saying the feat showed so much could be done with public workers.

Ogunlewe said all the 20,000 housing units and schools were executed by the state Public Works Corporation and not private firms during the regime of Alhaji Lateef Jakande.

The former minister expressed delight that Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu was effectively making use of the corporation not only to fix roads but to execute fresh projects.

He urged the Federal Government and other state governments to borrow a cue from Lagos and make the civil service the engine room of infrastructure development.

Ogunlewe called for the training and retraining of construction experts in the civil service, saying that would enhance their capacity to deliver service. (NAN)

– Aug. 6, 2019 @ 16:12 GMT |

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